Rough Beast
Timothy C. Takach
TTBB, opt. percussion (bongos, 3 concert toms, concert bass drum)
duration: 4:30
text: W. B. Yeats
Commissioned by the Miami University Men’s Glee Club, Jeremy D. Jones, conductor
Premiered at Central ACDA, 2014
Timothy C. Takach
TTBB, opt. percussion (bongos, 3 concert toms, concert bass drum)
duration: 4:30
text: W. B. Yeats
Commissioned by the Miami University Men’s Glee Club, Jeremy D. Jones, conductor
Premiered at Central ACDA, 2014
Text:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!
Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
– William Butler Yeats
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.