David Kulma

For Baritone and Piano

   Setting of poem by Catullus translated by the composer

Look at the score

As a high school student, I took four years of Latin with Dr. Laura Abrahamsen. The last two years, based around the Latin AP test, were more like literature courses than language classes. We were able to read poetic masterworks of Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus in the original, translating along the way. Catullus's poem LXXXV is a Webernian masterwork. Ambivalent pain is so well described in two short lines that I knew I would set this poem to music at some point. The problems of poetic scansion in Classical Latin made me to do a free translation into English, and I hope I have not embarrassed my teacher or the long-dead poet. The subject of the poem led me to a large amount of four-part chromatic voice leading and combined major-minor triads.

Catullus 85

translated into English by David Kulma

I hate and I love. But why do this, you ask.

I don't know, but it takes hold, and I am crucified.