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The Lovers' Aria (from Hieratica In Flames)

from Quartered: Songs of Palimpsest by S. J. Tucker

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At Thulium House, you attend the opera blindfolded, and the sopranos sing quietly and passionately at your very ear, as if sharing a terrible and exquisite secret.

"The voice begins quietly, a low, cheerless note held terribly long. A tremor passes through her--she can feel the singer’s breath on her neck, the electric brush of lips at her ear. And the song goes on, the ballad, the aria, so close she knows each motion of the invisible mouth. A woman sings of a child with the head of a frog who fought in the war...The song is complex and awful and so beautiful November’s stomach twists in fear that it might end. But end it will and end it does, and the singer’s tears have fallen into her ear."


(This piece was a great challenge for me, in the writing and in the recording. Singing quietly and with emotion, and doing it well, can be very difficult. As can writing something which can pose as opera without being overly heavy, if you've never tried it before. I've always been grateful for my tiny bit of opera training-- never more so than while composing and recording this piece!)

lyrics

Love has come to my call
by my hand love will fall
evil silence my song
on the field of war
Love will be your guide until
you cannot hear it sing
Behind the lines they took him down
upon the field of war

With the face of a frog she is singing alone
as her enemies fall
on the field of war
With his wolf's paws for hands
ever he follows her song
Ever he comes to her side
on the field of war

Any tool of battle may be turned against its master
and music is a ready tool of war
If your own betray you for the song of what you are
be brave child though you sing no more
Song may rage
Streets may burn
Lovers cry
and never learn

A glorious song of war
reduced to a ghostly cry
He'll nevermore be at her side
oh, why!
No sound but the falling of tears
no way for him back to her now
in silence as fierce as the tide
oh why?

No sound but the cries of ghosts:
o my love
why did you fight?
In the ringing silence
you can never tell me now
No sound but the falling of tears:
o my love
why did you go?
in the deadly silence
you can never tell me now

In the days when the battlefields sang
In the days when the boulevards burned
Lovers then as now may cry
and never will they learn

Love will be your guide until
you cannot hear it sing
Behind the lines they took him down
upon the field of war

Love has come to my call
by my hand love will fall
evil silence my song--

credits

from Quartered: Songs of Palimpsest, released February 24, 2009
Performed and recorded by S. J. Tucker, Rolling Minstrel Studio. All rights reserved; all wrongs obliterated. Very special thanks to Michelle Dockrey

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S. J. Tucker Perry, Arkansas

“Without our songs and stories, we are nothing.” S. J. Tucker has been captain of her own music career since 2004, when she left the workaday world behind to sing songs and change lives. Tucker is the voice of lore at the campfire and the sharp laughter of modern myth. With one hand anchored in her art and the other held out to us, she is songs and stories, community and wit. ... more

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