Product Description:
PDF score of All that we See or Seem
Performance Note:
All that we see or seem sets Edgar Allan Poe’s famous Dream Within a Dream. Faced with the realities of the brevity of life and beginning to process their grief, the narrator of this text is continually searching, reaching out for some sort of respite from their dark thoughts, but feels, ultimately, trapped within the unbreakable confines of fate. Just as grief is not linear, neither are their thoughts: no matter how they try to escape it, much like the musical textures in this piece continually return to a place of stasis, they always lead back to the same truths.
Each musical section depicts these attempts to break free from this reality, building emotional inertia in different ways: sometimes through a frenzy of denial, tripping over their own words, sometimes thrown into a rage, desperate for a different answer, aching as they feel everything seemingly slip through their fingers - and yet, nothing changes. Fate remains the same, and the narrator returns to where they began, in a state of denial, a suspension of belief: for how could this be anything else, but a dream within a dream? The final sonority is unresolved: will hope yet prevail?
Each musical section depicts these attempts to break free from this reality, building emotional inertia in different ways: sometimes through a frenzy of denial, tripping over their own words, sometimes thrown into a rage, desperate for a different answer, aching as they feel everything seemingly slip through their fingers - and yet, nothing changes. Fate remains the same, and the narrator returns to where they began, in a state of denial, a suspension of belief: for how could this be anything else, but a dream within a dream? The final sonority is unresolved: will hope yet prevail?
Instrumentation:
Soprano & Piano
Text by Edgar Allan Poe
4.5 minutes
Vocal Range: Db4-Bb5
Text by Edgar Allan Poe
4.5 minutes
Vocal Range: Db4-Bb5
Recording:
Score:
Text:
Dream Within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
- Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
- Edgar Allan Poe (1849)