我根据一首诗写的歌，录的音，以下附上诗歌和注释。感谢xdx无私帮助！！
Miracle Glass Co.
Charles Simic
Heavy mirror carried
Across the street,
I bow to you
And to everything that appears in you,
Momentarily
And never again the same way:
this street with its pink sky,
Row of gray tenements,
A lone dog,
Children on rollerskates,
Woman buying flowers,
Someone looking lost.
In you, mirror framed in gold
And carried across the street
By someone I can’t even see,
To whom, too, I bow.
.
.
When I first looked at this poem “Miracle Glass Company” by Charlie Simic, I suddenly had images flowing in my mind. I wanted to make a music video. However, since music is the the flowing spirit of film, instead of filming the images that are given already in the poem, I decided to create a piece of music to express the mood. As the music originates from a music video idea, a great portion of inspiration is visual, but when I try to work out the music in detail, I also build a number of parallels with the poem on the literary level.
This poem is full of imagination. The environment is sombre, but the mirror brings the speaker intriguing vision that can light up the darkened life. The title “Miracle Glass Company” suggests that there is a company that constantly creates “miracles” to our dull lifetime. I purposefully compose the music with more childish melodies to pair with the poem’s fairy tale like imagination. Considering that the poem was written in recent years, I also add some pop and jazz elements.
I choose tenor saxophone as the solo instrument in the music because this poem is written in first person perspective, and saxophone solo also emphasizes the sense of first person. I choose piano as accompaniment to create a sense of flowing, and drum to illustrate the pace of the poem.
The first note of the saxophone solo is a low G, in parallel to the first word of the poem “heavy” (1). The second and the third notes climb up to high F and high E, which are of a semitone distance. The semitone creates a slightly delighted mood, referring to a funny scene of a mirror “walking” across the street, but at the same time, the piano accompaniment has all half notes chord which convey the sombre and depressing environment. The first two line of the poem uses passive voice to erase the presence of someone who carries the mirror. I use a very short phrase of only three notes in the first line (G, F, E) to also illustrate that feeling of missing a part. I insert some piano eighth notes to connect the phrases of saxophone solo, which could represent the brisk footsteps of the mirror. In the eighth and tenth measure, I have some accidentals (B-flat and A-flat) that build up some funny chord. The speaker of the poem unexpectedly bows to the mirror and addresses to the mirror as “you”, which seems inconceivable and ridiculous at first, but leads to the poet’s further imagination (3). Similarly, these accidentals create funny chords at first, but these chords (B-flat diminished and F minor) are actually interrelated and resolve to the next chords (A minor and E minor). To further depict the image of bowing, I compose the second phrase, which is exactly one whole tone or one and half tone lower than the first phrase while having the same rhythm, illustrating the action of lowering the speaker’s body. The fourth phrase (measure 9 to 11) of the saxophone solo refers to the fourth line of the poem, both long in terms of length. There is a substantially increasing number of eighth notes compared to the previous phrases, which are mostly quarter notes, which suggests that the speaker is gradually focusing on more details on the mirror as he also bows to “everything that appears” in the mirror (4). The fifth phrase of the solo follows the similar idea. For the first time of the music, I introduce a sixteenth note to build a syncopation, the faster rhythm expressing the feeling of “momentarily” (5). After the fifth phrase comes a repeat with different endings, delivering the poet’s message that after closely looking at the mirror, the observation is “never again the same way” (6). The second ending is also the transition from the first period to the main melody. It is evident that the poet immerses himself in the world of observation and imagination where the description of the speaker himself disappears. To mimic a soaring of emotion and fascination with the surroundings, I have both the saxophone solo and the piano accompaniment playing a ascending scale with a G major chord leading to the first phrase of the second period.
Significantly in the second period of the music, the structural parallel to the second stanza of the poem, I added the percussion part. The sound of the hi-hat stands for the sound of stars created by a magic wand, transforming the real world object into something inspiring and meaningful, and the melody of the first phrase, going from C to E then down to low B, represents the motion of waving the magic wand, conjuring up the “pink sky” above the street (7). The regular quarter notes of the percussion illustrate the pace of the poet and the mirror and the pace of the changing objects reflected in the mirror. The chord in the first period is now broken into all eighth notes within legato, mimicking the poet’s flowing mood and thoughts on different objects he sees. The first two phrases, which consists of a staggered arrangement of the notes B, C, and D, are the musical equivalent to the image of a “row of tenements” (8). In measure 20 and 21, there are three notes, an odd number of notes in each bar, conveying the loneliness of the dog (9). The image of “children on rollerskates” also appears on the fourth beat of measure 21 where there are four sixteenth notes lie compactly in one beat. Finally, the fermata at the end of the second period in measure 30 represents “someone looking lost” as if he/she is looking for something unapproachable, which is also at the end of the second stanza of the poem. The second stanza lists a number of fascinating scenes that the poet might not have noticed without the mirror; however at this point the emotion has not yet reached the climax.
To match with the poem’s third stanza, I leave a space of twelve bars for saxophone improvisation after the second period. The third stanza is where the poet obtains full realization on beauty with a burst of emotion and appreciation, which is indeed really similar to the form of an improvisation after the main melody. There is the highest pitch (high E) of the whole piece of music. In the latter half of the improvisation, there are two parallel structures which start at the fourth beat of a measure and end with {D, C} and {E, D}, each with a duration of one and half beat. The parallel structure represents the poet’s two realizations on two levels. First, the poet bows not only to the mirror, but also to the person behind the mirror that “he cannot even see” (15). Further, the poet realizes that perhaps his sudden and magic observation of beauty in the sombre environment is not because he happens to see the mirror in the street, but because the mirror is set there deliberately for people to discover beauty. The word “company” in the title “Miracle Glass Company” suggests that there is a group of people with magic power, who dedicate themselves to create such “miracles” in the seemingly mediocre scenes, as if they are selling something to earn profit. Such an crazy explanation indicates that the poet’s imagination climbs to the climax, represented by high-pitched, free-styled and resounding saxophone improvisation.
The poem ends in the climax; however, according to my interpretation, my music should not end with improvisation because it does not match with the ending word “bow,” which is more of a solemn action (16). The word “too” urges the reader to recall the speaker’s first bow to the mirror, and all the scenes he observes and appreciates, in order to draw a connection to his second bow to the person who carries the mirror (16). Therefore, my music repeats back to the first period and the second period. This time, I loose up the rhythm and add a few improvised ending to each phrase, as if water dissolves the visual memory with pure emotion flowing, symbolizing the soaring new thoughts (the improvised endings) gained from observing the surroundings (each parallel between the main melody and the second stanza). Lastly, after re-performing the melody, just as re-appreciating of new thoughts in the poem, I end my music with a free-styled downward glide. My visual interpretation is the speaker looking back on the mirror of miracle, seeing sunshine reflected and scattered by the mirror, just like the descending and scattered notes on the glide. It could also be understood as second “bow” (first bow appeared in measure 1 to 2 and measure 5 to 6) (16). My music starts and ends with the exact same word meanings as the poem does. Although both “heavy” and “bow” has a sense of weightiness, there is a difference of “receiving” and “giving.” In both the poem and my music, the significant emotional climaxes give rise to such a difference, and lead to the common central idea that imaginative observation lights up our dull lives.
While matching with many details revealed in the poem, the music also conveys a general sense of beauty. It is not written simply for the sake of drawing parallels to the poetry; it is natural and pleasant. The poem, in the same way, has not much affected structural and sound devices. Through the use of sincere and natural language and melody, both the poem and the music gain more depth on the theme that spontaneous rencontre may set one’s imagination and inspiration on fire.