Robert Hughes

Mixed chorus a cappella

Program notes from the composer

AMO ERGO SUM (I love, therefore I am) from which “Madrigal” is excerpted, derives its inspiration, method and form from the style and substance of Ezra Pound’s Cantos. To a large degree the actual musical construction was suggested by musical techniques employed in the Cantos. However, all the notes are my own.

Ezra Pound’s life was a dramatic one and his Cantos are its intellectual autobiography. His life – aesthete, linguist, expatriate, political being, crackpot economist, prisoner in a barbed wire cage, octogenarian with ebbing mind – is reflected in AMO ERGO SUM, as are the major themes of his poetry – the process of nature as hypostasis, the value of tradition as modus vivendi, and the corruption of Usury, sin against nature.