Ozymandias – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Instrumentation: Baritone, piano

Duration: Approx. 4 minutes

Date Written:  1970

Composer’s note:  

This Romantic setting of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias was an assignment for Dominick Argento’s Advanced Materials and Structures class at the University of Minnesota back in the early 70s. It was one of those rare instances when the music flowed onto the paper without much revision. I’m still fond of it.

text:

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said, "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Percy Bysshe Shelley