The Music of Lori Laitman, now available as PDFs
Early Snow — 3 settings of Mary Oliver for soprano and piano (priced for 2 copies)
SM-000538644
- Composer
- Lori Laitman
-
Lyricist
-
Mary Oliver
- Publisher
- Enchanted Knickers Music
- Genre
-
Classical / Song
- Instrumentation
- Piano, Soprano
- Scored for
- Solo, Accompanying piano
- Type of score
- Piano-vocal score
- Duration
- 10'0"
- Language
- English
- Difficulty
- Difficult
- Year of composition
- 2003
Description
I composed Early Snow between November 2002 and March 2003, using 3 nature-related poems of Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver (1935 – 2019). The cycle was commissioned by Dr. Adelaide Whitaker for soprano Jennifer Check.
My goal in all settings is the primacy of the text. Meters shift constantly to follow the natural rhythms of the poem, melodies are structured to emphasize the most important words in a phrase, tempos are flexible and harmonies change to reflect the poem's underlying emotional content.
Last Night The Rain Spoke to Me starts with a flowing melody and accompaniment. The piece comes to a pause in the middle, as the rhythm slows and the pedal sounds lift (“the sky cleared.”). Grace notes in the piano under the words “stars in the sky” create a twinkling effect. The slightly irregular repetitive accompaniment that follows suggests “soft rain.”
Blue Iris allows the singer to play various roles -- an author, a fly and the wind. Different musical themes alternate throughout until near the end “the wind” sings “Doesn’t it?”. The piano arpeggios under “distillation of blue iris” depict the scattering of the flower by the wind. A thoughtful slower section ends the piece, with an echo of the previous arpeggios.
Melodic elements repeat throughout Early Snow. The high piano accompaniment at the beginning moves lower as the snow falls and starts to cover the ground. This theme returns each time the snow falls. Other repeated elements tie different sections of the poem together - for example, the melismas that occur on “all the others,” “all our heads” and “over the sun”. Likewise an octave motif occurs with “I thought how incredible,” “I thought of dried leaves,” and “And I thought how not one looks like another.” The piano accompaniment at the end is a variation of the opening, and the singer brings the piece to a dramatic close on a high B flat, illuminating the word “sublime.”
You can hear the premiere recording on YouTube from my Becoming a Redwood cycle. Just type in the names of the songs and my name for the links.