Song of Songs
Full program notes for Robert Rogler’s oratorio, Song of Songs
INTRODUCTION
Although a wonderful tribute to human love and one of the most beautifully written books in the Bible, the Song of Songs is probably the most difficult work in the whole of scripture to interpret. This is not only because its place in the canon is somewhat confusing (it never mentions God, has little, if anything, to say about religious protocol or ethics, and even if taken as a strictly prophetic utterance, is oddly erotic when compared with other prophecies.), but it also has inescapable and confounding technical difficulties.
Tantamount among these are that it has no list of characters nor any indication of which character is speaking at any given moment nor when the speaker changes. Also, whatever story the poem may be trying to convey, it is almost totally obscured by having no narration whatsoever nor any detailed settings, actions, or descriptions. Even the purpose and authorship of the book are in question since the opening verse, “The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s” more likely means that it is about Solomon than written by him.
What we are left with is a poem where words flow in an almost dream-like free-association, and the meaning of the vision is left entirely to the reader to try and figure out. All one may say for certain is that the story is primarily about a Shulamite woman who has some kind of relationship with King Solomon. They are the only two characters expressly named in the poem. However, there may also be a shepherd (1:7), friends and/or relatives (8:13), and perhaps even King Solomon’s harem (6:8-9).
Even more distressing than not knowing the exact number of characters, however, is that they often seem to be confused with one another. The shepherd, a man whose “hair is filled with dew” (5:2) from sleeping outside all night, refers to the Shulamite woman as “my dove, my undefiled”, which is the exact same words King Solomon uses for her later in verse 6:9. If the book is taken as a Messianic prophecy, then this makes perfect sense as the Messiah would be both shepherd and king, but for the composer, who has to make definite decisions about which character is singing which line, it is a nightmare.
To alleviate these difficulties, I felt compelled to adopt a rather unorthodox interpretation of the text. Although the interpretation may be theologically suspect, the book can, legitimately, be viewed in this light, and it should be noted that no changes had to be made to the words for this interpretation to work. Even changes made for purely musical reasons have been very minor in nature. The piece, therefore, is a word for word musical rendering of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Song of Songs, in order, and in its entirety.
SYNOPSIS
The music begins by looking in upon a young, exceptionally beautiful Shulamite woman working in her vineyard. She is deeply in love, and with all the energy of love and youth, she, wordlessly, skips and runs about in her labors filled with overwhelming and breathless joy as she dreams of her future of happiness. What she doesn’t know is that, at that precise moment, King Solomon is journeying from his palace, and passing by her vineyard, he espies her and is overcome by her beauty and energy. He orders his servants to convey his wishes to her that she become a member of his harem and take her to the palace. Her joy turns to unbearable heart-break because to disobey the king is treason punishable by death, but neither would she forsake her true love. In this lamentable state, she is removed to the harem - a world of luxury and sensuousness to which she is completely unaccustomed and definitely doesn’t belong.
As she enters, the women are singing joyfully of their anticipation of the king’s return and their longing for his kisses and caresses. The words grate on the ears of the Shulamite, and with the simple statement, “draw me,” she expresses her desire to be taken away from it all by her beloved. The harem’s attention now shifts to the new girl who is looking decidedly miserable. She self consciously explains who she is; why she is “black,” that is, darkened by sunburns from working out in the vineyards; and about the shepherd that “her soul loveth.” The women of the harem are unsympathetic to her plight, however, and tell her that, if she wants a poor shepherd instead of the king and all the honors he so recently bestowed upon her by choosing her for his harem, then she should return to her peasant life and live in a tent amongst the sheep like she deserves.
At this moment, the king returns and wastes no time in attempting to secure his new acquisition’s obedience. It throws the harem into a tither as the king enters with all possible pomp, power, and grandeur designed both to impress and intimidate the maiden into submission. He compliments her, tells her of the gold and jewelry she will have, and compares her to a company of Pharaoh’s horses, which probably didn’t sound very pleasing to her, but considering Solomon’s excessive love for horses (1 Kings 4:26), he may have thought it the best compliment he could bestow. The Shulamite shows no indication of being awed by the king or submissive to him. In fact, she says nothing for the moment, and the king’s suit continues into dinner.
There, she finally speaks and turns the king’s own words against him. She takes his compliments to her and applies them to her beloved. She compares her true love to the necklace of myrrh that she is wearing, and tells the king decisively that, like the pendant, her beloved may sleep all night between her breasts but that, of her choosing, the king never will. She then goes on to forthrightly express her deep feelings for her beloved, both to the king and the harem. She takes the king’s compliment to her that she is a lily among thorns and turns it to say her beloved is an apple tree in the woods - only his fruit is sweet to her taste, only his shade delights her, only his love covers and protects her. She is so much in love that she is sick with it!
She then warns the “daughters of Jerusalem,” though in such a way that the king gets her message as well, not to try and stir up or wake love falsely, for love will arise when it pleases. (The Authorized translation adds the words “my” and “he” to this verse [2:7 and elsewhere] making it sound like the harem is, somehow, waking her beloved, but her true meaning is the waking of love itself.) The king is disappointed that the display of his glory did not move the Shulamite, but it does not overly concern him. Solomon may be a wise and just king who does not want to force the maiden to do anything against her will, but he does have a harem of 1,000 wives and concubines. He is used to having his wishes complied with and does not believe the Shulamite will be any exception in the end. So he leaves her to contemplate his offer and all the riches she will be afforded if she complies, and he retires.
Once the king departs, the Shulamite’s beloved, having learned of her abduction and followed her to the palace, shows himself at her window. With all the confidence in his heart that true love cannot be thwarted, he boldly compels her to “rise up…and come away” with him. The Shulamite is beside herself with joy to see him and affirms to him that she is exclusively his and he hers. But she realizes, better than he does, the impossibility of trying to run away from King Solomon. She envisions the king and the harem as cunning foxes, cleverly watching and testing her vineyard walls, looking for weaknesses, and trying to find a way to destroy the young vines and tender grapes of their love. Under such conditions, it is too dangerous to meet so openly. She tells her beloved that “until the day breaks and shadows flee away” he should hide in the mountains and let her handle the situation. He trusts in her faithfulness and departs for the moment.
The Shulamite retires to bed and dreams of her beloved, searching for him, finding him, and refusing to let him go. A recurring desire of the Shulamite is to take her beloved to her “mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived” her. This demonstrates that she clearly finds everything about her love with the shepherd spotless and above board, while implying that she finds Solomon’s designs on her cheap, underhanded, perhaps even deceitful.
This view is strengthened when, the next morning, King Solomon has a surprise for the Shulamite. Perhaps aware of the shepherd’s visit in the night and having a desire to impress the maiden with something other than his power, which she obviously disdains, he decides to take her to his most beautiful palace in Lebanon. This served the dual purpose of isolating her from her beloved and the places with which she is familiar, as well as enticing her with the wealth of his kingdom. Thus, they spend the day traveling through the wilderness to Lebanon in Solomon’s chariot of cedar, silver, and gold; sixty soldiers carry the bed he intends to share with her; and when they arrive at the palace, it seems he means to marry the Shulamite woman right there and then.
All the court women are summoned to meet the king and to bring his wedding crown. The king, himself, then sings her an exquisite love song to soften any remaining objections she may have to the marriage. He tenderly compliments every part of her body from head to foot, summing up that he considers her the spotless, perfect model of womanhood. The poor maiden is under tremendous pressure. The whole court is watching her, and she can neither humiliate the king nor acquiesce to him. Finally, she very simply says that she will go into the mountains for a while, whether to think or pray or run away she doesn’t specify, but she makes it clear she is not going to marry anyone at that precise moment.
The king indulges her again and departs, and, as soon as he’s gone, the Shulamite’s beloved, who has followed her to Lebanon, once again appears. This time he has no delusions about the difficulties she is facing. They speak quietly and in hiding, but his message to her is still the same - run away “with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from Lebanon.” As they speak, they become increasingly carried away with their delight in being together. The shepherd begins to compliment her, but in quite a different way from the king. He doesn’t compliment her beauty as much as the person behind the beauty - the look in her eyes, the superiority of her love, and the marvel of her faithfulness. In her turn, she passionately confirms that her garden is for him and him alone and that she intensely desires him to take possession. Their emotions rise to a fevered pitch, although their voices never break a whisper.
As the second part of the oratorio opens, we find the Shulamite woman a few days later walking at sunset through the courtyards and hallways of the magnificent Lebanon palace. Solomon’s new tactic is to try patience with the Shulamite. He decides to wait for her to become comfortable with her new surroundings, get used to enjoying the luxuries of palace life, slacken her guard, and subdue her protestations. It turns out to be an excellent plan because the Shulamite cannot deny the palace is genuinely gorgeous, and being human, the thought must occasionally cross her mind, as it did Elizabeth Bennet’s in Pride and Prejudice, “of all this, I might be mistress.” But upon retiring to bed, she dreams what, for her, must be the worst of nightmares. She has been seduced by the pleasures of the palace and the convenience of giving into King Solomon’s will.
In the dream, her beloved knocks upon her door dripping with dew after sleeping outside half the night waiting to see her, but she refuses to get up to let him in, being washed and perfumed and snug in bed. Her excuse is that she doesn’t want to “defile” herself. As her beloved tries the door, however, she suddenly comes to her senses and jumps up to let him in. But she is too late. Her beloved is gone. In a panic, she races hysterically through the streets in a desperate attempt to find him. Half dressed, half out of her mind with remorse, and roaming the streets at a suspicious hour of the night, the watchmen who find her make an attempt to arrest her. This only adds to her regret and frustration. She is uncooperative, and the night guard savagely beat her. This abuse finally wakes her up, but still alarmed by the nightmare, she calls out to the other women of the harem that, if they see her beloved, they tell him she still loves him.
The harem is, again, unsympathetic and, perhaps, getting a little tired of this “holier than thou” recalcitrance. This time, they tell her off with mocking sarcasm and a surprisingly modern argument - “All men are basically the same. Yours is a loser shepherd. Why are you bothering with him? Take the king, you naive fool!” The Shulamite responds with an answer she hopes they’ll understand as it is in the very same style in which the king spoke to her. She tells them of his physical beauty, complimenting every part of his body from head to foot in turn. However, in the end, she implies that there is more than mere physical attraction in their relationship with the words, “This is my beloved, and this is my friend.” The harem, having nothing but contempt for this bond of love and friendship, asks sarcastically if they may go searching for him with her. The Shulamite, now fully recovered from her nightmare, tells them that there is no need. She knows exactly where he is. After all, she is his, and he is hers.
King Solomon, having overheard the preceding conversation, now enters with some frustration knowing that the Shulamite continues to intimate that her feelings have not changed, and this challenges and rebukes his conscience. He decides to lay everything on the line in one, final ultimatum. He and the harem both have an underground feeling that the Shulamite would never really return to the truly harsh peasant life she had been living before coming to the palace. She could never seriously entertain the idea of working again in her vineyard out in the scorching sun after experiencing the ease and opulent life of the harem. After all, she has never actually tried to run away. Her protestations must simply be a means of easing her own conscience at her inevitable forsaking of her childhood sweetheart. And so, the king tells her that he is finding her obstinance “as terrible as an army with banners,” and he is not going to take any more of it. He points out that if she remains in the harem, she will be treated like a goddess because he and all the wives and concubines love her. But if she is really determined to return to her shepherd love and back-breaking manual labor for the rest of her life, then she should “turn away (her) eyes” and go. To this, the Shulamite only says that she feels as if her soul has been made like the “chariots of Amminadib,” and like a chariot, she takes off directly.
Realizing that they have seriously underestimated her, the king and harem immediately cry out for her to return. They again set to flattering her and complimenting the parts of her body, though this time it’s from foot to head. They note her regal bearing by calling her “prince’s daughter”; the harem affirms the king’s love for her in that he is held captive “in the galleries” by her, and the king even chastises himself for his inability to take possession of her.
But the Shulamite is deaf to it all. Her only desire is to reunite with her beloved and return to their home of fields and vineyards. As they meet up, she sings a song of her breathless joy, somewhat reminiscent of the opening overture, but now tempered and touched with a little more maturity. She promises her beloved that he shall receive all the fruits that she had laid up for him and give him all her loves. Oddly, at this point, she wishes he were “as (her) brother” so that she “should not be despised.” This is because, among the Bedouin, the lands they will have to travel through to return home, it was forbidden for a man and a woman to display any public affection for each other. This was true for everyone except a brother and sister born of the same mother. After their separation and newly made promises of physical intimacy, it is understandable that the Shulamite is concerned she may forget herself and get them into trouble. She craves open and public acceptance of their relationship and their ardor, especially after all the hiding and politics they had to endure with the king.
As the couple approaches their home, back through the wilderness, she “leaning on her beloved,” they sing the final, ultimate expression of true love. He reminds her of when they fell in love under the apple tree in the village garden where she was born. She, in turn, asks him to wear her seal upon his heart (a necklace) and his arm (a bracelet), symbolically putting him in possession of her secret feelings and public life. Neither can resist the power of their love for each other, which is “strong as death.” It is a love no opposition can conquer, a love no oceans can quench, a love that cannot be bought with all the affluence of all the kings of all the earth, a love that is the most precious of all riches. They know that love. They have lived it!
A curious little paragraph follows where the king and harem, although disappointed in their ambitions for the Shulamite woman, can’t help but admire her and wish they were more like her. They sing of a “little sister” they have who is just coming of age. Their hopes are that she will be a “wall,” like the Shulamite woman, who allows none but her beloved into her garden, and not a “door,” like themselves, who have seen their gardens trampled and choked by the trespassers and weeds they have allowed inside. The Shulamite answers from far away that she is, indeed, a wall that even King Solomon couldn’t climb. He may have 1,000 vineyards, but she possesses one that she will ensure cannot be bought or breeched. And whatever harsh realities she and her beloved must face as shepherd and vinedresser, their spirits will always sore with freedom and joy among the highest places of the “mountains of spices.”
So may love be for us all.
Robert Rogler