To the Flame, for soprano and chamber orchestra, includes texts from three different sources, united by their use of the moth as a symbol. Ted Kooser’s “Lobocraspis griseifusa” depicts a real-life species of moth that subsists on the tears of sleeping individuals. In Kooser’s poem, the moth—in reality, tiny and harmless—appears in a person’s dream as a grim stranger, cutting an imposing figure. The middle section of the piece features one of the Exeter Riddles—Anglo-Saxon brain teasers by an unknown author, written in Old English and collected in the 10th century—in which a moth eats the pages of a book, but “curiously” gains no wisdom. Finally, Louise Chandler Moulton’s “Warning” casts the moth, archetypally, as a symbol of fatal attraction. Though it can fly away, the moth is helplessly drawn to a “love” that will destroy it: the flame. Though the moth plays a different role in each of the piece’s three sections, they share a sense of the inevitable, and the suggestion that the course of one’s life is shaped by forces beyond our control. To the Flame was commissioned by the Georgina Joshi Foundation in 2016, and premiered in 2017 in Bloomington, Indiana by the Indiana University New Music Ensemble with soloist Rachel Mikol and conductor David Dzubay.
Recording: Rachel Mikol, soprano; The Indiana University New Music Ensemble; David Dzubay, conductor (Bloomington, Indiana, 2017)
Lobocraspis griseifusa
This is the tiny moth who lives on tears,
who drinks like a deer at the gleaming pool
at the edge of the sleeper’s eye, the touch
of its mouth as light as a cloud’s reflection.
In your dream, a moonlit figure appears
at your bedside and touches your face.
He asks if he might share the poor bread
of your sorrow. You show him the table.
The two of you talk long into the night,
but by morning the words are forgotten.
You awaken serene, in a sunny room,
rubbing the dust of his wings from your eyes.
Ted Kooser (b. 1939)
A moth ate words. To me it seemed
a remarkable fate, when I learned of the marvel,
that the worm had swallowed the speech of a man,
a thief in the night, a renowned saying
and its place itself. Though he swallowed the word
the thieving stranger was no whit the wiser.
Anonymous (c. 10th century)
translation by Paull F. Baum (1886–1964)
Warning
Fly away, O white-winged moth!
Wherefore burn your tender wings?
Fatal is the flame you love
To such gauzy things.
That too ardent crimson ray
Only steel may safely prove:
Use your wings to fly away—
You’re too slight for love.
Louise Chandler Moulton (1835–1908)