soprano, flute, bass clarinet, violin, and cello (2018)
text: Thoreau
Premiere performance, March 2019, by Kamratōn
duration: 9′
program note
Wild Apples was commissioned by Kamratōn, who premiered it in Pittsburgh in March, 2019. The text is excerpted from Wild Apples: the History of the Apple Tree, by Henry David Thoreau, first published in the November 1862 issue of The Atlantic.
I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a flavor… These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain…
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors
it is necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air.
They must be eaten in the fields
when the frosty weather nips your fingers and the jay is heard screaming all around, “To be eaten in the wind.”
There is, first of all, the Wood-Apple (Malus sylvatica); the Blue-Jay Apple; the Apple which grows in Dells in the Woods, (sylvestrivallis) also in Hollows in Pastures (campestrivallis); the Apple that grows in an old Cellar-Hole (Malus cellaris); the Meadow-Apple; the Partridge-Apple; the Truant’s Apple, (Cessatoris,) which no boy will ever go by without knocking off some, however late it may be; the Saunterer’s Apple,—you must lose yourself before you can find the way to that; the Beauty of the Air (Decus Aëris); December-Eating; the Frozen-Thawed, (gelato-soluta,) good only in that state; the Concord Apple; the Assabet Apple; the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England; the Green Apple (Malus viridis); the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth…
They must be eaten in the fields
when the frosty weather nips your fingers and the jay is heard screaming all around, “To be eaten in the wind.”
the Apple whose Fruit we tasted in our Youth… wild apples…