Conqueror worm
'Conqueror worm' for mezzo soprano soloist & chamber choir with 10 singers (SSSAAATTBB) is written in 2012.
The choir is the body and humanized part of the soloist who is sinking more & more into darkness. The choir is an echo and delay of her voice and thoughts. I have used the text from the story ’Ligeia' by Edgar Allan Poe, in which she is dead but comes back with a message and for revenge; dark and powerful.
The piece is also written in a version of the two last verses for soloist & chamber ensemble.
'Conqueror worm' is a part of the chamber opera "The Illuminated Traces of Ligeia”.
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Material to download:
Recording (from concert in April 2012, Copenhagen, Denmark)
Recording (from concert in April 2013, Aarhus, Denmark)
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Listen
Conqueror worm 1-3 (Helene Lang & 10 singers)
Conqueror worm 4-5 (Helene Hvass Hansen & ensemble Lydenskab)
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Conqueror worm; choir (score)
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Conqueror worm; ensemble (score)
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CONQUEROR WORM
Lo! ’t is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.
Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly–
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
Invisible Wo!
That motley drama, –oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.
But see, amid the mimic rout,
A crawling shape intrude!
A bloodred thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes! –it writhes!– with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And seraphs sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued.
Out, out,–are the lights– out all!
And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.
Poem by Edgar Allan Poe from the novel ‘Ligeia’
