Mythological Fragments is a New Focus Recordings release (FCR474) that features two vocal works by composer Steven Ricks. This web page includes all the information in the digital booklet and on/in the physical, demo CDRs, as well as ADDITIONAL information, including the libretti for both works, and links to video of live performances of each piece. Please enjoy!

Medusa in Fragments (2011) 20:14

Jennifer Welch-Babidge, soprano

Keith Kirchoff, piano

Prologue  (00:00)

(Instrumental)

Concerning Athena (02:54)

The moon in its slow-lunged oscillations does not determine its own apogee.  And how I am I to blame for having been the object for another’s appetite?  In the distance between one celestial body and another, I was neither proximate nor remote.  I was nothing radiate and had no thought of gravitation.  In truth, I had no thought at all in that state of attentive inattention, both mindful and mindless.  Am I to blame, then, for another’s desire? Am I to blame for having been opportune?  Do I consider fault and might?  Do I consider the form that blots out and obliterates another?  And what of the wise sister who is no sister at all, the dominant one, the unpeaceful intellect that would build and build only to destroy?  She would imagine eclipse without syzygy, a shadow cast from nothing. 

To Perseus (Concerning Andromeda) (04:45)

Does she see your eyes in the stone black night

Does she turn from your vain face, your voice

Does she bear the empty gaze of your blind eyes

Does she know how you shield those black crimes

Are you the shadow hunting her each dark hour

As you hunted me when you forged your fame

Whose eyes are those from which she turns

Whose eyes are those turning her to stone

Concerning the Graeae (07:23)

The gray ones, in all their ferocity, were always so much less than fierce.  Never the terrors they were meant to be, those vacant crones fell to bickering over each insufficient crumb.  And always the same over every inglorious thing.  How easily they found themselves dismayed by the pull of the moon, by the shifting breeze, by the scent of things they could never tease out.  Weren’t they upended more than once by their inability to agree on points of view? Weren’t they endlessly frustrated by the absence of depth?  And more than any other, shouldn’t I have seen coming what finally came?  Shouldn’t I have seen that so much of their blathering would eventually give me up?  One can hardly fault those enormous appetites after so many years with such feeble reserves, but I should have known what so much hunger could do.  If they were easily fooled by that warrior child (so soft and so vain), it was only because I had already fooled myself.  I was the one who trusted them to be as terrible as the deep, wicked sea.  I was the one who thought them wise enough to distinguish between here and gone. 

To Perseus (09:38)

Did I see too clearly in the stone black night

Or was your need simply greater than mine

Was the pediment so bare, the cornice so lacking

Have my eyes guarded you as you hoped they might

Do you think of me each time evil passes by

Or has the myopic mind allowed you to forget

Are you still so full of blank awe or do you see me on

Every door, every window, and everywhere you turn

Perseus to Medusa to Perseus (14:45)

Eyes to see were never eyes to be seen. 

            My eyes, my eyes, they are seen and all-seeing.

And the ill-conceived hero, that half-breed, had no cause with me. 

            I conceived the cause, I am the cause.

What was I but the means to his eventual tyranny, the catalyst that sent him running here and there?

            Here and there, here and there, you did send me running.

Inciting the masses with nothing more than a burlap sack. 

            Exciting the masses.  Delighting the masses.

He made so many statues of those archaic beasts. 

            A garden, yes, to excite and delight.

He petrified so much. 

            I defied only you.

It must have seemed that his magic was something more than one good trick. 

Wasn’t it something?  Something grand, something to behold. Weren’t we a pair, the two of us? 

They would have had reason to run from him, eyes to the ground.  But in the end was he really so much more than a short-tempered collector of rocks? 

            Much more.  So very much more.  You’ll never know how much more.

Was he more than a petty thief? 

A pretty thief?  A pretty thievery? More and more and more and more. 

To me he was nothing but the source of false perceptions.

            Deceptions.  Reflections.  Deflections.

The cause of all these phantom sounds. 

            I hear them too.

He was nothing but a selfish child

I hear them too.

 Who shook for fear

Here and there and there and there.

 One who turned from me for all the wrong reasons?

To Pegasus (16:55)

Before the offspring sprang from that fount unfailing.  Before Bellerophon, with all his pride and presumption, thought he could hitch a ride and join those whose pride had already presumed too much.  Before the silver sliver slipped into that golden bridle.  Before the foal fooled the fool into foolhardy flight.  Before chimera fell to the stings of that horsefly.  Before all that, the Gorgon gorged on and on and on and on and on until that good flood of blood that made a fount of a neck, that made of widow of so much spite.

But now she’s gone (I am) and all that remains is Gorgophone (that phony), that ungorgonian one hiding behind so much gorgoneia (so sad and lonely).  The head wasn’t enough, it seems, so her father took my name as well.  But only after he tried to steal my seed, my steed, even tried to lay claim to that spring that sprang where I lay lame, even tried to pretend that it was he who bridled and tamed and had dominion over the blood of my neck (where no episiotomy was ever going to do the trick).  But it wasn’t the feather-footed one who rode my baby, my unweary one, that gale who can’t help but spring springs with each plumed footfall.  Wings and wings and everyone has wings these days.  So many wings.  Even the whore swings on horse wings. 

But down here it’s just me and all the bellerphontic ones among the living dead, down here among the unintentional bearers of our own bad news, down here among the uncatasterised catastrophes, the uncatechized, the gelded ones (plenty of steers down here), the unhanded and beheaded, the also-rans.  But baby, my baby flies high.  There he goes, there he rides, bucking fool after fool after fool.  Baby, oh baby.  Baby, my blood.  Baby, didn’t we witch and bewitch.  Baby oh baby oh baby, didn’t we laugh while we could.

Baucis and Philemon (2020-23) 45:55

Madison Leonard, soprano

Shea Owens, baritone

Jillian Townsend, flute/piccolo 

Anamae Anderson, Marilyn Dodson, harps 

Matt Coleman, percussion 

Michelle Kesler, cello 

Nathan Haines, conductor

Barta Heiner, narrator

Kevin P. Anthony, wind sounds

Brian Christensen, creator of metal tree sculpture

Introduction: The Gods Came as Peasants 6:23

The gods came as peasants and asked for food and a place to rest. Among the rich, every door was closed and every word unkind. At last, the gods came to the simple home of Baucis and Philemon. Poorer than most, the couple showed the gods great generosity, offering them food and wine. But as she filled their glasses, Baucis found that her pitcher remained heavy. No matter what they drank, there was always more. At this, she understood what her guests were and offered to give them everything she and her husband owned. The gods thanked the couple for such hospitality but said that they had given enough. They invited their hosts to follow them out of the village. Tomorrow, they said, this valley will flood, destroying those who have shown no compassion. The gods led the couple to the peak of a high mountain. From that height, Baucis and Philemon turned to find a lake where their village had been, and on its shores a temple of gold. The couple asked two things. First, to serve as guardians to the temple. Second, that when it came time for them to die, that they might do so together. The gods granted these wishes and after a long life, Baucis and Philemon were transformed into trees, he an oak and she a linden. They remained there, on the shores of that lake, their branches intertwined, for a very long time.

A Home for Birds (spring) 4:05

Philemon                                                                                                                                 Baucis

Here we are then, you and I, at the dawn of a second life.

Was the sky above us ever so blue?

There are thorns in our hands.

And sap in our teeth.

There are leaves in your hair, or is it hair in your leaves?

The world lies open before us.

But what time do we have?

All the time in the world.

How will we keep it?

Time won’t be kept.

On the day the gods came,

I heard a sound like a clock

On the day the gods came,

I heard the sound of your heart.

I began to feel something new in my veins.

And I began to see.

Something new in the air.

Something new on the wind.

Look at us now. What we’ve become.

The perfect softness of your skin.

The bend of your branch

The lobe of each leaf.

Do you see what you do to the bees?

I see the shape of your crown.

Look at us, always leaving, never going.

Look at us, a home for birds.

Interlude 1: Passerina Amoena 1:35

(piccolo solo with environmental recording)

I Once Complained (Philemon solo) 2:59

I once complained of a pain in one knee and now I’m a network of knots.

Do you hear the complaint of a creaking branch? Rumor on the wind?

Doesn’t each year end a little too soon? Doesn’t everything creep toward an end?

Order disorders, begins to fall through. You’ve heard this before, but it’s never not true.

Interlude 2: Rainfall, Runoff, River 4:04

(instrumental—complete ensemble)

The Arrow of Time (summer) 5:09

Philemon                                                                                                                                 Baucis

Here we are then, you and I.

At the gates of the future, covered in green.

Do you hear it still, the old tick-tock?

Time is more than the measure of time.

Where are the catkins we set to the wind?

Where are the acorns and oak nuts?

Time is more than a measure.

It has a way and a weight.

What do we do when time goes away?

We have more than enough.

We have more than before.

What do we do when time goes astray?

Time, like an arrow, moves only one way.

Could we go back?

Only one way.

Will it wait or delay?

Time flies like an arrow that always flies true.

Does every town sink?

In time it will.

Does every leaf fall?

Again, in time.

Does everything die in the end?

Time, like an arrow, has a way and a sway.

It moves like a river that never runs dry.

What of us, then?

Time will tell.

Do we dissolve? Cease more to be?

The past grows larger, day by day.

Do we just steal away?

More now than has ever been,

time and the past will welcome us in.

Will they cut us down and count the rings?

Time flies true and will embrace.

Do we know what lies beyond the beyond?

The future is not what it used to be,

but time is here to stay.

Interlude 3: Cloud (to) Figure (to) Ground 3:24

(cello solo with environmental recording)

There is More to You and Me (Baucis solo) 2:59

The branch is not the leaves it grows. The leaves are not the tree.

The window more than the light it gives, the sky more than we see.

The tree is not the shape it makes. The shape is not the tree.

This end is not the end, my love. There is more to you and me.

Interlude 4: Change in the Air 2:40

(instrumental—full ensemble)

Marcescence (fall) 4:21

Philemon                                                                                                                                 Baucis

It slows, the heart. It loses the beat.

Never before have I struggled to breathe.

The bellows blow with less force.

Never before have I felt so weak.

In each leaf the story is told.

What will become of us?

Perhaps from you they’ll make a ship, from me the figurehead.

The leaf withers.

Don’t fear the winter wind, my love.

I feel a hush.

Don’t fear the shadow cast.

(he hums)

We reach our arms up to the sky.

(he hums)

We drive our toes into the earth.

(he hums)

Let us live for what remains.

(he hums)

Let us sing a cradle song.

The Hidden Lives of Trees (winter) 4:24

(instrumental—percussion solo on metal tree sculpture, with live electronics)

Afterlife 3:52

Once, there were two tall trees on the shore of a mountain lake, their branches intertwined. Each winter, the trees grew thick with moss. Each spring, they burst with leaves and flowers. By summer, the trees welcomed a vast system of life. In those branches: raccoons, squirrels and mice. In those branches: robins, blue jays, and starlings. In that bark: aphids, mites and moths took what they needed and nothing more. Beneath the trees, families of foxes formed their dens. In autumn, the trees shed their colors, dressing the ground with food for worms. Once, there were two tall trees on the shore of a mountain lake. They stood there for generations, watching the world inch toward forever. Once there were two tall trees on the shore of a mountain lake, their branches slumping, their bark cracking into great fissures, a home for beetles that took more than they gave. Once, there were two tall trees, their branches bare. Once, two old trees lost their footing and crashed to the earth. Once, two great trunks lay side by side, slowly filling the world with woody debris, becoming home to algae and mushrooms, salamanders and frogs. Once, two trees slowly slipped into the soil, dismantled themselves, made way for something new.

Medusa in Fragments recorded July 27, 2011, de Jong Concert Hall, BYU, by Jon Holloman 

Edited and mixed by Steven Ricks

Baucis and Philemon recorded October 26-27, 2023, The Box, BYU, by Sam Herrera

Edited, mixed, and mastered by Erdem Helvacioglu 

Recordings produced by Keith Kirchoff

All recordings mastered by Troy Sales

© P 2025 by Steven L. Ricks (ASCAP), and Steve Ricks Music (ASCAP). All rights reserved.

Design by Brent Barson, flame image by David Habben