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."