Eight Japanese Poems is a setting of Japanese poems from the Zen tradition for voice and harp, all but the first haiku. The poems are full of evocations of nature: we hear of the mountains, streams, dusk, rain, thunder, fireflies, leaf dew, insects, cuckoos, duckweed, all evoking how the world is experienced after some experience of Zen practice. The harp sometimes evokes the koto, sometimes austere and percussive, sometimes delicately ethereal. Eight Japanese Poems was written in 1983 of tenor Gregory Mercer and harpist Barbara Chapman and revised ten years later for soprano Christine Schadeberg.
I. Unaware
II. I’m Cheerful
III. Fireflies
IV. Buddha Law
V. Listen
VI. Don’t Weep
VII. Cuckoo Sings
VIII. To Clouds
Commissioned by Gregory Mercer and Barbara Chapman