About this Piece

New-Made Tongue is a setting of the first five stanzas of The Salutation by Thomas Traherne (c. 1637–74). It was a simple undertaking, an early quarantine project that gave me the opportunity to write something for my old friend Iestyn Davies. Each stanza is set such that it spans the (practical) range of the countertenor voice, outlining at first an octave, and then eventually outlining the aspirational and hopeful interval of the ninth on the text “New burnisht Joys! / Which finest Gold and Pearl excell!” The final stanza, “From Dust I rise / And out of Nothing now awake” suggested to me a sort of dreamscape, shimmering and suspended. —Nico Muhly 

Lyrics are a setting of the first five stanzas of The Salutation, a poem by Thomas Traherne 

"These little Limbs
These eyes and hands where here I find
This panting Heart with which my Life begins
Where have ye been? Behind
What curtain were ye from me hid so long!
Where was, in what Abyss, my new-made Tongue?

When silent I
So many thousand thousand Years
Beneath the Dust did in a Chaos lie
How could I Smiles, or Tears
Or Lips, or Hands, or Eyes, or Ears perceive?

I that so long
Was nothing from Eternity
Did little think such joys as Ear and Tongue
To celebrate or see
Such sounds to hear, such Hands to feel, such Feet
Such Eyes and Objects on the Ground to meet

New burnished Joys!
Which finest Gold and Pearl excel!
Such sacred Treasures are the Limbs of Boys
In which a Soul doth dwell
Their organized Joints and azure Veins
More Wealth include than the dead World contains

From dust I rise
And out of Nothing now awake
These brighter Regions which salute mine Eyes
A Gift from God I take
The Earth, the Seas, the Light, the lofty Skies
The Sun and Stars are mine if these I prize"