The Sea Cow
soprano and piano (self-accompanying)
(2018)
Text by M. C. St. John (b. 1986)
Language: English
Duration: 7 minutes, 30 seconds
Premiered May 2018
Liz Pearse
Chicago IL
Composer’s Note
When Liz Pearse approached me about her dream project of a set of new commissions with texts about animals, I was all in. At first I had requested to write about the hippo (because of Fiona at the Cincinnati Zoo), but when that animal was already taken, I chose the hippo of the sea: the manatee. Liz said that she was looking for a piece that she could sing and accompany herself on the piano, and I was really looking forward to the challenge of striking a unique balance between the instruments. When the singer and pianist are two separate people, both can use their full potential in respect to their own instrument, but when one person is responsible for both, a different kind of awareness of ensemble must be considered.
I have never been great with words; part of my insistence on continuing with these composer’s notes is to make writing a more normal and comfortable process for me, but I mostly draw the line at original texts for new works. I confirmed this line when I couldn’t find very compelling existing work about manatees so I thought I’d write my own. I didn’t get very far.
Enter: M.C. St. John. We were colleagues starting back in 2015, and MSJ is a great writer of words. I asked him if he could take my general thoughts and awkward phrases and spin them into something a little more cohesive and compelling. MSJ came back at me, ten days later, with a free verse poem that he had spun into existence and I was hooked. The text is deep and playful, a little silly and a little sad. It’s exactly what I needed it to be, so that I could approach the composing process with similar space for these and other dualities. When thinking about Liz’s voice in particular, I knew I had a lot to work with and could be adventurous, but I also wanted to pay attention to manatee as a sound-maker, not just the subject of the text. Manatees have no vocal chords (not surprising; whales don’t, either… but all mammals do have a larynx), so most of their communication is via a series of squeaks and whistles. For this reason, the flow of the piece is interrupted by whistles, sometimes alone and sometimes with the piano, as if to encourage communication between worlds. In the case of “The Sea Cow,” this parallels the underwater communication humans can’t hear, but also the interaction between the breathing instrument of the voice and the percussive piano.
Liz has really made this piece hers in the past few years, and she just performed it on her most recent Birthday Concert! Check out a brand-new performance from her (May 14, 2022).
Text
How now sea cow, swimming in celestial waters,
grazing on motes of light and seaweed, murmuring
across the depths. You play the hide and seek
of ghost-gray submarines, your flippers propel
you into the deepest secret spots, though
I suspect you want to be found.
The lonely susurrations from your snout
are drops in the sonar rippling out and out and
out to stir the kelp, inspire the coral, and lap
against unknown shores.
Sea cow, how now you are another creature
wondering where it’s drifting and singing and why,
for the waters are vast and strange for a string
of notes no one will hear or remember.
Yet you sing.
Sometimes keen, yes, other times moan,
your brow wrinkled and whiskers twitched
for your voice to carry into the shadows
where years are the fine silt sediment from life
only to build more blind and silent reefs.
Now how, sea cow, are you compelled to send
such battered lullabies into the big drink
to be swallowed by the uncaring waves?
Pausing in your call, you hear the response—
It is tinny and faint, a frequency from a far-off throat.
The song is one you know well.
And the ocean shrinks that much more
with the comfort of a chart to follow.