“Only A Little Taller” came about by recording Louna and Ledah reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1923 poem entitled “The Concert” (printed below). I then transcribed the melodies of Witches’ voices reading the poem. These melodies became the ones played in the piece. Each performer’s melody is derived from her reading of the poem, while the other performer accompanies with harmony. The prelude and postlude sections of the piece are reflections of these harmonic progressions.
In a sense, the poem is played four times, without ever being explicitly recited. The first time is through the harmonies for Louna’s reading, which create a kind of harmonic void into which the poem is placed by Louna’s melody. This is followed by Ledah’s reading, imposed upon her harmonic accompaniment played by Louna, followed ultimately by the receding shadow of Ledah’s harmonic progression. I imagined this treatment of the poem and the music as creating a conversation between the two performers, while only ever allowing the audience to hear one point of view (melody and its corresponding harmony) at a time to reflect the point of view of the woman in the poem.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an influential American poet and writer who lived from 1892 to 1950. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry the same year she wrote “The Concert,” and also wrote dramatic works and the libretto for an opera. The Poetry Foundation biography of Millay describes her as “one of the most skillful writers of sonnets in the twentieth century, and also like [her contemporary Robert] Frost, she was able to combine modernist attitudes with traditional forms creating a unique American poetry.” The biography continues to note that Millay was also known for her “riveting readings and performances, her progressive political stances, frank portrayal of both hetero and homosexuality, and, above all, her embodiment and description of new kinds of female experience and expression.” Millay’s biographer Nancy Milford wrote that Millay “became the herald of the New Woman.” Millay’s strong independence and progressivism is exemplified the poem that is the backbone of “Only A Little Taller.”
No, I will go alone.
I will come back when it's over.
Yes, of course I love you.
No, it will not be long.
Why may you not come with me?
You are too much my lover.
You would put yourself
Between me and song.
If I go alone,
Quiet and suavely clothed,
My body will die in its chair,
And over my head a flame,
A mind that is twice my own,
Will mark with icy mirth
The wise advance and retreat
Of armies without a country,
Storming a nameless gate,
Hurling terrible javelins down
From the shouting wall of a singing town
Where no women wait!
Armies clean of love and hate,
Marching lines of pitiless sound
Climbing hills to the sun and hurling
Golden spears to the ground!
Up the lines a silver runner
Bearing a banner whereon is scored
The milk and steel of a bloodless wound
Healed at length by the sword!
You and I have nothing to do with music.
We may not make of music a filigree frame,
Within which you and I,
Tenderly glad we came,
Sit smiling, hand in hand.
Come now, be content.
I will come back to you, I swear I will;
And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I went.
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