Finally available in its entirety–
Nevermore: a three-movement suite for viola and piano
Nevermore was composed for Charlotte Goode and explores all the gothic angst within the pages of Edgar Allan Poe’s following works:
“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary… Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow, from my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore… Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore! Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’”
The Raven arrives and seems to mock our narrator’s sorrow—that of seeking after his long lost Lenore—and it drives him further mad with every answer from the Raven being “Nevermore.”
“…this maiden she lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by me.”
The movement begins with the pure innocence of childhood love, only to be confounded in the frustration of losing the beloved Annabel Lee—presumably to the jealousy of the angels above, who saw the lovers’ happiness and killed the beautiful girl in retribution.
Nonetheless: “neither the angels in Heaven above nor the demons down under the sea can ever dissever my soul from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee”.
- Intro and A: I loved the old man. He had never wronged me… I think it was his eye! Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold…
- B: I undid the lantern cautiously… but I found the eye always closed; and so it was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his Evil Eye.
- C: Upon the eighth night…a simple dim ray, like the thread of the spider…fell full upon the vulture eye. …for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder! I thought the heart must burst.
- D: I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far done… He was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more. I dismembered the corpse. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and deposited all between the scantlings.
- E: There entered three men, who introduced themselves…as officers of the police. The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them…It was a low, dull, quick sound. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides…
- F: I foamed –I raved –I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled.
- G: They were making a mockery of my horror!- this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! “I admit the deed! –tear up the planks! here, here! –It is the beating of his hideous heart!”
