Update Title: EB684597-D1AC-4A31-AF09-BDA089ED8419

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The Tenth Muse is dedicated to the City of Pasadena on the occasion of its Centennial, and was commissioned by the City in association with the Pasadena Chamber Orchestra.  Completed in February, 1986, it is a combination of song-cycle and symphony: nine poems are sung (some appear twice) during the course of a four-movement symphonic form.

The title comes from an epigram in the Greek anthology attributed to Plato: "Some say nine Musics--but count again.  Behold the tenth: Sappho of lesbos."  From this, a custom has arisen of referring to significant women poets as the "tenth Muse."  My piece, then, is a celebration of the extraordinary quality and range of poetry written by women, and the soprano soloist is the personification of the woman poet, the Tenth Muse.  In a way, the piece is also an extended operatic soliloquy for this wonderfully complex and gifted character.

The poems I have chosen represent a wide range of moods and styles, but they fall into two main categories.  First there are poems about the intense inner struggle of artistic creation, of being a woman poet or just a poet pure and simple.  Secondly, there is lyric poetry that describes life and the world in a variety of ways.  So, in the first movement, the Tenth Muse sings mostly of inner artistic and psychological turmoil, yet begins with a simple, elegant invocation to poetry and ends with an equally direct and beautiful evocation of Nature.  These clear lyric statements which frame the main body of the movement, a symphonic adagio, presents two poignant lyrics by 7th-8th century Japanese poets.  Here again, the clarity and directness of the poems affect the music; the Tenth Muse sings simply, and whatever orchestral complexity there is occurs in the distance, on the "autumn mountain" or in the "far field."  The third movement, a scherzo, is a rush of works and a torrent of notes.  The three poems used are similar in approach to rhyme scheme and meter, but quite different in content.  From Lady Montagu's song of ironic praise to a dead bride, to Christina Rossetti's very dark sonnet in distrust of the world of the senses, to Anne Brad-street's delightful discussion of the problems of being a woman poet, the Tenth Muse is at full throttle.  Many musical linkages are made in this movement, but the subject matter remains diverse, wide-ranging.  The final movement returns to the battle for self-expression and self-realization begun in the first, expressed in an extended excerpt from de Burgos' "Poem to My Death" and in and abbreviated reprise of Berggolts' "To Song." In the end the battle is won: the "very self" is liberated and identified as "poet," and the Tenth Muse sings a final, luminous "Greatly shining" to the autumn moon and to her own triumphant soul.  --Donald Crockett

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"The work is a skillful, and finally poignant, setting of poetry by women--from Sappho to Julia de Burgos, via Christina Rossetti, Amy Lowell and others. Part Two, called 'The Autumn Mountain,' which took the place of a slow movement, is where Crockett comes into his own with extremely sensitive, expressionistic writing for voice and instruments. The remaining two parts were on that level.." --Los Angeles Herald Examiner

"In lyrical outpourings and bucolic moods, and later in a quick by gentle scherzo, the new work meanders most attractively for three movements. Finally, it achieves dramatic tautness and genuine urgency. That is no condemnation of the fluid, water-treading, post-Barber style the young composer utilizes in these first 20 minutes, only a statement of preference for the mountain-climbing musical idiom to which he resorts in the final nine." --Los Angeles Times

"...The third movement (is) a driving scherzo of bustling, grotesque whimsy and rustling undercurrents of strings and winds. The final movement, an extended song of death nocturnal and death triumphant, gave voice to the highest musical poetry of the Tenth Muse..." --Pasadena Star-News

"I think Crockett's one of the finest young composers alive...The Tenth Muse...It's Great. It's very neoclassic, very Bartok and Stravinsky..." --Robert Duerr, conductor. From The Pasadena/Altadena Weekly

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