Today, a short song: just ninety-five seconds long. A setting of an eight-line poem.

A work of art needn’t be lengthy or large. One of Beethoven’s piano Bagatelles says all it has to say in nineteen seconds. Consider a haiku, a netsuke, a cameo brooch, a carved amethyst.

Though short, the song expresses its text, shifting as the mood of the lyrics shift.

Here’s the poem:

A June Day by Sarah Teasdale

I heard a red-winged black-bird singing
Down where the river sleeps in the reeds;
That was morning, and at noontime
A humming-bird flashed on the jewel-weeds;

Clouds blew up, and in the evening
A yellow sunset struck through the rain,
Then blue night, and the day was ended
That never will come again.

The piano opens with a tiny tune that sounds like a Scottish folk-song. The singer takes up the tune, the effect is as bright and fresh and full of promise as the sunny beginning of a day in June.

The day darkens in the second stanza. By evening there is rain and the sunset is merely ‘yellow,’ not in the least magnificent.

Does “blue” describe the night, the narrator’s emotional state ... or both? The day’s promise was unfulfilled; what was it, exactly, that fulfillment which “might have been?” The poem, the song, both leave us wondering, wistful.

The little Scottish-sounding folk-song returns, a sigh of regret, this time in a minor key.

Am I allowed to say it? This breviloquent song seems to me to be flawless, a gem, a perfect albeit miniature work of art. See what you think.

To hear Susan Olson singing A June Day from Teasdale Songs, click on the link above.

To see a PDF of the score, click on the link above.