Butterfly Hunt
General
Instrumentation
Soprano Voice, Woodwinds [2,0,2*,1], French Horn, Accordion, Percussion (Bass Drum, Vibraphone), Harp, Piano, Strings [1,1,1,1,1]
Score Video
Music Video
About the Work
This plaintive chamber concerto for soprano serves as a vector of my feelings about the violations of belonging and self-expression. Upon reading Walter Benjamin’s eponymous essay, I was taken aback by the striking resemblance between his reckless butterfly hunt and violent human persecution. Such unprovoked cruelty continues to claim lives of people stigmatized simply for daring to be themselves, like innocuous butterflies fluttering in the garden before being captured. Set to my introspective poem in three stanzas, my music symbolically demarginalizes the individual voice by making it a catalyst for the ensemble, and reflects on its 'audacious' strife.
Text
last words in a mist of sighs,
time’s forgotten we were born,
I prayed the rainbow sheen of skies
would set us free, so we may fly
above the burning stakes and thorns.
on the trampled grass we bid farewell,
their empty nets flung in defeat alike deathly rings,
as borne aloft these hunting grounds we dwell
and flutter towards the blossom, waiting for the spell
that dying flowers cast on our pair of wings.
like the fleeting butterflies,
we’ll soon bring the lingering morn
and the sparkling dew would bear witness to our yester cries,
spurring gardens into bloom, from the chrysaline disguise
we’ll emerge again, transformed.
lyrics by Kacper Madejek (2024)