Until I sang this gorgeous and poignant piece with my own choir back in the spring of 2017 I had never heard of Houston Bright, a prolific and esteemed composer and conductor who lived from 1916-1970, dying far too young at age 54 from cancer.
Bright spent his entire career teaching music at West Texas State University, although his 30 years there were punctuated with a stint in the military during World War II and some time off to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Southern California. Along the way he taught composition and music theory, formed and led choirs, and worked on his own compositions, which number over 100, for piano, solo voice, band, orchestra, and, especially, choir. Interestingly, one of the few poems by someone other than himself that he set to music was Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” I was very interested in finding a performance of this piece since it seems so outside the range of Bright’s other music, but even the vast resource of YouTube doesn’t seem to have an example.
Although Bright’s life was short, and it’s fair to say that his work isn’t terribly famous. I’m sure his students and the members of his choirs still remember him. He seems to have used the time he had very productively.
I was sure that there was going to be a whole backstory to this particular song, probably tied to a tragedy in Bright’s life. But no. The song appears in Wikipedia’s listing of Bright’s compositions, there are a few performances on YouTube, and that’s it. There’s not even a date of composition, just a copyright date of 1957, which would have been when Bright was in his early forties. I thought, ‘Maybe his wife died before this,’ but she outlived him by over a decade. The song is clearly about the death of a loved one, and Bright wrote the words as well as the music. There is nothing in the information I’ve found on his personal life that gives details about such a tragedy. The tone of the words is so piercingly sad that it’s hard for me to believe that Bright had no immediate reference as he wrote them.
The lyrics of “Rainsong” specifically refer to death as sleep, a fairly common image. But Bright also includes other words that aren’t all that usual in this context: “sodden,” “querulous lullaby,” and “croon.” I also find the phrase “when a spirit from life withdrew” to be telling. I almost wonder if the song is dealing with the loss of a child, perhaps as the result of a premature birth or miscarriage. The composer’s bio says that he and his wife had no children. It seems almost . . . pointed. Beyond that I just can’t go.
Here’s a good performance, although unfortunately not with a live choir. The one group that has a video on YouTube goes flat in the middle, something that may (may) have happened with my own choir’s performance. It’s very difficult to stay on pitch when you’re singing something so slow and sad, with no accompaniment. But if you can do it–well, the results are worth it:
CLOUDS HANG HEAVY above the plain,
They bring the smell of a summer rain,
And my heart, it is heavy, too,
And my spirits are heavy, too.
(See how the rains do pour,
As if forevermore.)
Clouds drift low in a shadowed spell,
They bring the mem’ry of one farewell,
When a spirit from life withdrew,
When the soul of my love withdrew.
(See how the rains do pour,
As if forevermore.)
Raindrops fall from a sodden sky,
They drum a querulous lullaby,
As in mem’ry of one who sleeps,
As if crooning to one who sleeps.
(See how the rains do pour,
As if forevermore!)
© Debi Simons
