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Air Baby

SCORE
The Woman Who Married a Caterpillar
The Woman Who Took in a Larva in to Nurse
Woman
An Air Baby

PROGRAM NOTE
Air Baby comprises four narrative songs. Most of the texts are, on the surface, grisly and surreal but they fast reveal themselves to really be about emptiness, longing, and loss. The initial repugnance felt
at some of the images instead brings out feelings of tenderness and pity for the protagonists. Written for flute, clarinet, violin, percussion, and soprano, I was interested in the challenge of composing a piece without any lower voices. The percussion changes for each song reflecting the emotional temperature
of the setting; marimba in the first—jumpy and itchy; vibraphone in the second, helping to build up a cocoon of sound around the mostly monodic vocal line; cymbals and gongs in the third, dashed sporadically over smears of scales under a lengthy melismatic vocal line; drums in the fourth pushing forward the telling of its dangerous and deranged story.

TEXTS
The Woman Who Married A Caterpillar
Kumuhea the night-caterpillar loves the woman
with his daylight man-body takes her for wife, 
handsome man huge caterpillar, at night
gorges on sweet-potato leaves
Kumuhea huge night-caterpillar
bloated back home mornings
soft Kumuhea flabby Kumuhea, through
him shiftless the wife starves 
Where does he go nights, her father says, Where
does he go nights, says the hemp string
his wife fastens to track him where he goes nights; 
after him through brush on his crawl
the long string snarls, the night-
caterpillar is strong with anger, tears
into leaves all around
all people cry Kané help us
night-caterpillar kills our food, do him in
in his hill-cave home, he
kills our food 
merciful Kané slices him to bits
we now call cut-worm cut-worm cut-worm
traditional (Hawaiian)


The Woman Who Took in a Larva to Nurse
There once was a barren woman, who could never have any children. At last she took in a larva and nursed it in her armpits, and it was not long before the larva began to grow up. But the more it grew the less blood the woman had for it to suck. Therefore she often went visiting homes nearby, to set her blood in motion, but she never stayed long away, for she was always thinking of her dear larva, and hurried back. So greatly did she long for it, so fond of it had she grown, that when she came to the entrance of her house, she would call out:

"Oh, little one that can hiss, say “Te-e-e-e-E-er.”
The larva would answer “Te-e-e-e-E-er.” The woman then hurried into the house, took the larva on her lap and sang to it: 
“Little one that will bring me snow 
  when you grow up 
Little one that will find me meat 
  when you grow up!” 
And then she would bite it out of pure love
The larva grew up and became a big thing. It began to move about the village among the houses, and the people were afraid and wanted to kill it, partly because they were afraid, partly because they thought it a pity to let the woman go on growing paler and paler from loss of blood. So one day when the woman was out visiting, they went into her house and threw the larva out into the passage. Then the dogs flung themselves on it and bit it to death. It was completely filled with blood, and the blood poured out of it.

The woman who had been out visiting came home all unsuspecting. When she got to the entrance of her house, she called out to the larva. But no one answered, and the woman exclaimed: 
“Oh, they have thrown my dear child out of the house.” 
And she burst into tears and went into the house weeping.
traditional (Inuit) 


Woman
There is a woman standing in the doorway. She has sallow skin and hair like metal shavings. Her dress fits her as though it had been dropped onto her from the ceiling. She is fatigued and would like to sit down, but there is only one chair in the room she faces and it is pulled up to a table and the sleeper is bent forward, his arms folded upon the table and his head rested upon his arms. There is a window near the table, and the curtain blows out from it, touching the fingers of the hand nearest it. It is raining, There is no fragrance in the rain, no scent which is clear and distinguishable. The woman in the doorway touches her face, remembering how as a girl she liked to walk in the rain with her head turned up into it, her fleshy tongue escaped and protuberant between her open lips, catching the rain into her mouth.
Faye Kicknosway (b.1936)


An Air Baby 
A woman had an air baby, with little dust eyes that wink and blink in the sunlight.

But one day she breathed deeply and breathed her little baby into herself. So that she breathes out as hard as she can. No, that is not my baby. And she breathes out again as hard as she can. No, that is not my baby either.

Nothing is your baby, you foolish dog sitting there panting, says her husband. No, no, I breathed it in, I sucked it out of my arms into my nose. You foolish dog, how dare you treat my unknown heir like a smell.

I had it here: it had just wet its diapers and I was just about to throw it on the floor for wetting on me. I was just summoning my breath to jump on it for wetting on me. I was just drawing deeply on the atmosphere in preparation for the punitive feat. And I drew it into one of my nostrils, or both, breaking it between my nostrils.

You are the cruel mother that eats back her young, says her husband. And why should I not?

Because you eat well enough without that. Why just the other day I brought you a lovely insect, remember, six legs? and how you baked it in the oven? remember how I climbed on your back and said take me to Market Street, where I bought you a cookbook? and we looked through it for a recipe for baked baby, and there was none? And how you baked the cookbook and how really good it was? Don't you remember anything?

I remember something that I never had.
Russell Edson (b.1935)


REVIEW
Andy Vores, in Air Baby, sets out to be, by his own admission, grisly. He succeeds. The texts came already saturated with horror-comlc-cum-nature-documentary grittiness. Deadpan, therefore, was how soprano Elizabeth Keusch had to be most of the time. When not, a spectacular display of nonstandard vocal effects broke out (brava). Instrumentally Vores summoned up equivalents, in sound, of exsanguinatlon (glug, glug, glug), being cut to pieces, and such. By adroit pacing he also saw to it that the piece didn't wear out its welcome. 
Richard Buell • The Boston Globe