O Years! and Age! Farewell was written for the 2007 Midwest Composers Symposium at Indiana University.  It was premiered by the Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble and Chamber Orchestra under the direction of Carmen Téllez.  It also served as my dissertation project.

Program Note In setting the text of Robert Herrick’s poem Eternity, I was initially aware of several musical approaches that could appropriately be taken.  The poem appears full of dichotomy, putting eternity in relief against time.  Most simply, the poet describes time as being diametrically opposed to eternity.  On a deeper level, the intent of the traveler's going somewhere is his arrival at a point where going can no longer be done.  Thus, the goal and the action required to accomplish that goal represent the opposition of time and eternity.  Activity is always associated with time (“mine eyes shall see,” “moon shall sway”), while passivity represents eternity (“how they are lost,” “shall be drown’d”).  This dichotomy invited a musical response that was neither entirely progressive nor completely static. More is at work in the poem, however – specifically, the poet/protagonist has not yet reached his goal, let alone departed on his journey.  He is simply saying farewell at the outset, describing for our benefit (we are his audience) the glories that lie ahead.  None of this is reality yet, although its eventuality is certain.  Once the traveler has departed, our existential experience remains unchanged, except for the noticeable absence of the poet.  In bidding years and age farewell, the poet is drawing a distinction between our immediate future and his: while he progresses to the unknown eternities, we must remain under the effect of time, wherein moon still sways the stars and night always follows day.  From our point of view, then, we are the ones bidding farewell to the departing poet.  And in the end, time still binds us, no matter how we try to conjure images of the poet's eternity. My musical setting is an attempt to portray this interpretation of the text.  The most significant musical ramification is that “endless day” is never actually reached, merely imagined, almost while we look upon the poet departing into the invisible realms.  The ending leaves us in a transfixed state, wondering what such an existence could possibly entail (this is, in fact, the reality of the listener's experience, blurring the distinction between musical exegesis and concurrent psychological experience).  I attempted to give equal musical weight to contrasting images: the sea, always a body of motion and commotion, and infinity, an existence of incredible, slow, transcendent unchangingness.  I also imagine a tinge of forlorn longing, both for the poet who is leaving us, and for the infinitely better state in which he will soon find himself.

Eternity by Robert Herrick O years! and age! farewell: Behold I go, Where I do know Infinity to dwell. And these mine eyes shall see All times, how they Are lost i’ th’ sea Of vast eternity:-- Where never moon shall sway The stars; but she, And night, shall be Drown’d in one endless day.