Boosey & Hawkes
I. If I had gone before
II. And suddenly, I am in the woods again
III. Out of the Mid-wood’s Twilight
IV. The White Deer
V. Evening, and all the birds
The Hart is a song cycle for soprano and orchestra inspired by nature and folklore. From Arthurian Legend to Hungarian and Celtic mythology, a white stag, or a white hart, has featured in folktales as an otherworldly messenger, or a sign of hope, due to its rare and elusive nature. The Hart explores these themes and, through poetry from Sara Teasdale, Oscar Wilde, and myself, portrays an impressionistic retelling of a tale inspired by folklore across its five movements in which the narrator, void of direction, reflects on her previous, mysterious encounter and strives to see the deer in the forest, once more.
The first movement, If I had gone before, opens with a mystical yet pensive sound-world with a setting of Teasdale’s Late October, in which the narrator instructs us to ‘listen’ to the ghostly sounds of the woodland around her. This is followed by the shadowy and reflective second movement, And suddenly, I am in the woods again, in which the narrator laments about her previous encounter with the deer, a vestige of beauty and magic, from an earlier time. The livelier third movement, Out of the Mid-Wood’s Twilight, is a setting of Wilde’s In the Forest depicting the sudden appearance of the deer, which brings a fleeting moment of joy, before vanishing again. In the fourth movement, with words after Teasdale’s The Star, the narrator returns to the woods describing a glowing star seeking its reflection in a pool, before the deer gently reappears and they reunite from afar. In the final movement, Evening, and all the birds, a setting of Teasdale’s Dusk in June, the narrator expresses her enduring enchantment with the world as the birds ‘ease their hearts of joy for miles around’ and she, ‘like the birds,’ sings before the night.
Grace-Evangeline Mason, 2025