SYMPHONY IN YELLOW
Published 1915
Griffes most successful Wilde art songs (in his lifetime) was “Symphony in Yellow,” published in 1915 as part of opus 3, Tone-Images. It is the second song of Tone-Images, following another Wilde song, “La Fuite de la Lune,” and is a poem/song that uses the word yellow four times in three stanzas. Its monochromatic schema allows Griffes to play with the images and sounds in a perfect fusion of text and music.
The song is written in the key of B major and there is only a single instance of the vocal line using E-flat in the piece; that note, however, is sung in the middle section of the poems to describe the “yellow silken scarf” of fog that entwines the entire song.
"SYMPHONY IN YELLOW"
Oscar Wilde
Published in Poems (1881)
An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
SYMPHONY IN YELLOW
Music Charles Griffes
Words Oscar Wilde
Published by Schirmer 1915