The Second Coming (1993/2001) a setting of William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”

Program notes As much as the work itself, William Butler Yeats’ vision of time and history inspired my setting of his poem titled “The Second Coming”. His philosophy on these subjects can be represented by the image of two interlocking cones (which he refers to as “gyres”): the tip of each forms the centerpoint of the base of other, and the length of each cone symbolizes a span of 2000 years. As the gyres rotate, time itself moves in an ever-widening spiral from tip to base; once at the edge of one gyre's base, the spiral begins to tighten as time whirls towards the centerpoint of the other. The arrival at this point signifies the turning of the millennium, which Yeats believes to be a time of complete reversal of “good” and “evil”... a time during which “...The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity...” Once having reached this point, time begins to spiral in the opposite direction, following the shape of the second cone, and the 2000-year cycle of moral inversion continues. "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats is set to music by permission of A. P. Watt, Ltd. on behalf of Anne and Michael Yeats.

The Second Coming Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/ Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/ The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/ The ceremony of innocence is drowned;/ The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;/ Surely the Second Coming is at hand./ The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out/ When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi/ Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert/ A shape with lion body and the head of a man,/ A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,/ Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it/ Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds,/ The darkness drops again; but now I know/ That twenty centuries of stony sleep/ Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,/ And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,/ Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

--William Butler Yeats, 1929