Text: from The Indian Queen
(John Dryden and Sir Robert Howard)
I attempt from love’s sickness to fly in vain,
Since I am, myself, my own fever and pain.
No more now, fond heart with pride should we swell,
Thou canst not raise forces enough to rebel.
For love has more pow’r and les mercy than fate,
To make us seek ruin and love those that hate.
I attempt from love’s sickness to fly in vain,
Since I am, myself, my own fever and pain.
PDF: I_Attempt_From_Loves_Sickness-sample.pdf
I Attempt is my one and only commissioned composition. In 2014 my colleague in Carmina Early Music Ensemble, Carolee Pastorius, asked me to set the piece for mezzo voice and keyboard. Carolee performed it twice that year, with Carmina director Vera Kochanowsky at the harpsichord, at concerts by Carmina and by Vera’s other early music group, Illuminare.
Carolee must have liked it; she insisted on paying me more than the agreed-upon fee. Sadly, she passed away a few years later.
In 2019 I arranged the piece for trumpet and piano, transposed to a more trumpet-friendly key, for my Cornell classmate and fellow band member Marc Gerber.
The great Henry Purcell began, but did not come close to finishing, an opera based on The Indian Queen. I was careful not to listen to Purcell’s setting, lest it influence my own. I need not have worried. Purcell chose a lively tune in a major key with a quick 3/4 meter. I took a different, pessimistic view of the text, with the singer suffering from love and helpless to secure any measure of relief.
I chose E minor for a key, but the piece begins and ends on the dominant B major. The meter varies between 5/8 and 6/8, giving the music a syncopated, almost jazzy feel. The first stanza, repeated at the end (with a bit of a twist), is strictly tonal with a nod to the Phrygian mode, but the middle stanzas embark on a harmonic journey, one that would never have occurred to Purcell, before returning to the D♯ leading tone of E minor.