You with the Cool

A setting of an excerpt from the poem
Piety by Fletcher LaVallee Bartholomew

For soprano voice, clarinet & piano

Also available for flute, clarinet & piano

Duration: 1 minute

Performance History · Download PDF Score · Purchase Sheet Music

In You with the Cool, Greg Bartholomew has set the opening lines of Piety, the second poem in his father Fletcher LaVallee Bartholomew's collection entitled And the Wind: Gnostic Poems 1945 - 1979. As with much of the elder Bartholomew's writings, the poem concerns the interplay of science, philosophy and spirituality. Minneapolis native Fletcher Bartholomew spent most of his life in aviation, beginning with a childhood flight in a Curtis Robin in 1929 followed by a job as an inspector in an aircraft factory. He went on to become a test pilot in World War II, serving at the South India Air Depot at Bangalore, India. He subsequently worked in aviation in Munich, Germany, and in Lima, Peru, before he concluded his career working in airport planning and management.

Piety by Fletcher Bartholomew

O, You with the cool, thin blood,
With the measured and premeditated step,
You, with the test tube and the slide rule,
And the self-defined philosophies,
Bent on making life comfortable, long and barren!
Leave a least a village or a field or two
Unsterilized,
Where those who worship other than the works of men,
Where those who have concern for more than Man,
May congregate to live in graceful reverence,
To keep the Bridge.

From Empedocles to latest Nobel Prize,
With the greatest ease you blind the public's eyes,
By naming all the things that we can see
Through natural sight or through telemetry,
Implying that because their interplay
Is measured in detail, now we can say
We know the things themselves. They are in fact
But temp'ral forms of something held intact
In this our world of human time and space,
As are ourselves, by majesty and grace
Beyond our knowing. Let not insipid pride
Conceal the myst'ry, or from us Heaven hide.

Purchase Sheet Music

Sheet music for You with the Cool is available from J.W.Pepper and from Sheet Music Plus.

Performance History

World premiere with vocal not yet scheduled.

June 8, 2018: Performed by the Tabor Trio (viola, clarinet & piano), in West Linn, Oregon.

February 18, 2019: Performed by The University of Alabama Chamber Trio (Dr. Denise Gainey, clarinet; Dr. James Zingara, trumpet; and Dr. Chris Steele, piano) in Birmingham, Alabama.