Songs and Haiku

Two haiku (the first for piano alone—the only piece here to have been published before—the latter by Basho) bookend three love songs dedicated to Harvey’s wife, Rosa. The grouping of the pieces into an eight-minute cycle was the composer’s own idea, and it mixes Eastern and Western poets in a totally characteristic manner. Both Tagore and e. e. cummings are represented, poets who are featured in some of Harvey’s finest works (Song Offerings and Forms of Emptiness, respectively), and a third song sets Tennyson’s “Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal.”