Lori Laitman

Compositor

Lori Laitman

Lírico

Thomas Moore

Editora

Enchanted Knickers Music

Gênero

Clássico / Canção

Instrumentação

Piano, Soprano

Composição para

Solo, Piano de Acompanhamento

Tipo de composição

Partitura piano-vocal

duração

5'30"

idioma

Inglês

dificuldade

Advanced

Ano de composição

2003

descripção
Susan Dormady Eisenberg commissioned this song for her novel, The Voice I Just Heard. The book is set in a town based on Cohoes, NY, and is a coming-of-age tale about an opera singer. In the book, this singer commissions a composer to set this poem.

Some songs are easier to compose than others, and the length and language of this poem presented many challenges. The meter of the poem was very regular, but I did not want the music to have this sort of regularity. So I adapted the words in a free-flowing meter, to capture the image of water flowing. The opening notes on “rise of” (the C to D flat) are themselves a melodic rise, and this motif forms a musical thread that runs through the piece — significantly returning in the “hurry, hurry” section and again in the long melisma that accompanies the words “soft as now it hangs” late in the work. The whole song should be performed with a great deal of rubato. The downward arpeggios in the piano in both the opening and closing create a sound effect “roar” – reminiscent of a waterfall. Other word painting is used throughout — for example, the piano accompaniment to “as I viewed the hurrying pace” suggests a hurried and driven pace; the gentle descent in the setting of “caress” reminds me of the sweetness associated with such a gesture; in the phrase “as if to leave one look behind,” the pitch of the word “one” returns on the second syllable of “behind” — creating a melodic representation of the words; and the octave drop on the word “sighed” mimics the sound of a sigh. The song closes with a slightly altered repeat of the opening, and then the “waterfall” motif ends the song with a very extended decay of piano sound.

The premiere recording, with soprano Sari Gruber and pianist/composer
Lori Laitman, can be heard on the Within These Spaces CD (Albany).

data de postagem

17.07.2023