And All Time

I devised the idea of a piece on time when I found several texts all dealing with time from various points-of-view. These four poems work very well together: Edgar Allan Poe's The Bells addresses the delight of the universe spinning in rhythmical time; Henry van Dyke's Time Is comments on how we experience the slow or swift passage of time-based on various states of emotion; John Milton's On Time accuses time of being greedy, stealing time from man’s lives; and Walt Whitman's Poem of Joys celebrates the joy of time, both now and always, as well as throughout the universe. I arranged these four texts in this specific order to craft a narrative that moves through delight, sadness, anger, and finally joy. I carry out the idea of time through the tempo of the works - all but one tempo indication are derived from a musical beat lasting one second (i.e. the speed of the quarter note is sixty beats per minute). The performers double as the narrators of the poems throughout the piece. -S.G.