Because a Poet Sang

1. Alike Unto Leaves

2. Let Me Live

3. Helen on the Ramparts (Cadenza)

4. Terrible Beauty

5. Heart of the Shepherd

6. The World of Light

7. Down the Years (Vocalise)

8. Pillared Arch and Sculptured Tower

Everything is bigger in epic: the conflicts, the trials, the timescales. That said, the moments in Homer that most appeal to me are the moments of smallness, when relatable human conversations and images come to the forefront. These are the moments when the ultimate morals of the poems are revealed. 

“Because a Poet Sang” compiles select passages from the Iliad and Odyssey, ending with a poem written in response to them. Rather than telling the whole story of the epics, this work draws a new narrative between the lines. It starts with the soldiers realizing the futility of their own violence. They will be forgotten as quickly as the fall’s leaves with the coming of spring. Rather than being the perpetrators of brutality, they are victims of a culture that attaches glory to the wrong values. 

From the midst of this low point emerges Helen, represented by the solo violin. The war is spurred on by the ignorant men on both sides who desire her, yet there is more to her story. Perhaps she represents the ideal of beauty itself, a beauty that neither Trojans nor Greeks can claim as their own. Living with respect toward this beauty, not dying in glory on the battlefield, is the path to immortality.

This realization makes space to explore the quiet moments, when nameless characters and places take center stage in the story. The individual becomes small but the human spirit grows to unimaginable influence. Pure beauty; unadulterated by greed, violence, misogyny or any other of the countless vices that dominate epic; become principal. We share our stories through art, not conquest. The beauty in the Homeric poetry and the will from which it was born are the strongest links reaching from ancient Greece until today. 

In a time when violence shakes all too many corners of the world, I hope this piece can remind audiences what really matters across generations. May we see the beauty in others and have the courage to listen to the voice of beauty within ourselves. We don’t remember ancient history because of who won or lost. Who was right or who was wrong. We remember because a poet sang.

-Matthew Thomas Brown