Melia Watras

MELIA WATRAS: SEEING CYPRESSES WITH CATHERINE C.
for recorded voice (2017)

World Premiere: Catherine Connors, recorded voice; April 17, 2019, Seattle, WA

Duration: 5:16

Program notes:
Seeing Cypresses with Catherine C. was inspired by the extraordinary scholar Catherine Connors and her essay Seeing Cypresses in Virgil. I came to know Catherine, head of the Classics department at the University of Washington, in 2015, after asking her for some assistance with speaking Latin in a piece I was writing at the time that drew from Virgil’s Aeneid. 

Catherine’s essay and our conversations excited my imagination and desire to explore ancient worlds, echoes through time and the ancients’ thoughts on music. I was taken by their belief that we don’t create music, we remember it; it already exists beyond us.

This became a central idea in Seeing Cypresses with Catherine C., in the form of whispering roots: ancient words from poems that helped shape parts of civilization and continue to have a presence today. These “roots” are spoken, sotto voce, throughout the length of the piece. The number seven is an important figure in this work, corresponding to the number of strings on Orpheus’s lyre. To the ancients, each string represented a different sphere.

The text for this composition was generated from Catherine’s essay: from Virgil, Ovid and Martial, as quoted or referred to by Ms. Connors.

Seeing Cypresses with Catherine C. is admiringly dedicated to Catherine Connors.

—Melia Watras

Seeing Cypresses with Catherine C. is part of the cycle, Firefly Songs. It can be performed independently, in different combinations with the other works, or as part of the complete set.