During the many COVID-related shutdowns since spring 2020 I got, for whatever reason, deeply lost in the multi-faceted as well as exciting American poetry of the 20^th and 21^st century – also, but not only, in search of fascinating texts that I could set to music.

My search radar finally hit William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), who despite his eminent importance hasn’t been set to music that often.

A far cry from the ostentatious educated bourgeoisie of T.S. Eliot, light years afar from the dangerous fascist proximity of Ezra Pound, WCW, as he is affectionately called, is among the fixed stars of American modernism together with Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

This delicate, reduced, seemingly inconspicous and playful poetry, which at a second glance is yet so subversive and rich of razor-sharp meaning, has since completely captivated me.

Based on poems from three publications, “Sour Grapes” (1921), “An Early Martyr and Other Poems” (1935) and “The Wedge” (1944), I finally composed a cycle of six orchestral songs. I didn’t want to redouble or retrace WCW’s poems, but rather consciously give my own personal view on these fragile masterworks.

This commission from the Vienna Symphonic and the Vienna Konzerthaus has been inspired by the delicately modelled sound and the richness of facets of this wonderful orchestra. It is dedicated to my parents.

(Johannes Maria Staud, 3.2.2022)