Voices: SSA, piano - Weird Sisters

Weird Sisters is a setting of a poem of the same name by Elizabeth Sylvia, a tribute to the three witches from Macbeth. The structure of the poem is what first drew me to it— there is a violent rip right down the center of the page, splitting the text into two columns. The words on the left are organized into sensical, evocative sentences, while the text on the right is splintered into sharp little fragments of one or two words. On the page, it’s hard to know whether to read each line across left to right, or to read it as two separate poems. To me, the words on the left are an incantation, as if chanted around a bubbling cauldron, while the words on the right are the magic spell that emerges: the snaking bonds of sisterhood.

I have split the ensemble into a chorus, who sings the text on the left, and a soloist, who sings the text on the right, the lines weaving in and out of each other hypnotically.