The Music of Lori Laitman, now available as PDFs
Dark Spring — four songs for tenor and piano on poems by Eugenio Montale (priced for 2 copies)
SM-000599072
- Composer
- Lori Laitman
-
Lyricist
-
Eugenio Montale
- Publisher
- Enchanted Knickers Music
- Genre
-
Classical / Song
- Instrumentation
- Piano, Tenor
- Scored for
- Solo, Accompanying piano
- Type of score
- Piano-vocal score
- Duration
- 8'0"
- Language
- English
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Year of composition
- 2010
Description
I wrote this cycle as a gift for my friend Dana Gioia’s 60th birthday, using four of his translations of motets by the great Italian poet, Nobel Laureate Eugenio Montale. In the Motets, Montale describes the difficult aftermath of a love affair with a woman he will never see again.
The Flower on the Mountainside opens with a sweet simplicity, and employs word painting throughout, from the repetition in the accompaniment to portray the display of flowers on the mountain to the use of dissonance for the “screech of metal.” The Spirit is animated in character and modal harmonies help capture the idea of “ancient songs and dances.” Scissors, Don’t Cut Away opens with an agitated piano accompaniment before settling into a quieter midsection. As the narrator continues to struggle with his loss, the opening accompaniment returns. You Know This is supremely lyrical and the melody introduced by the piano at the start becomes the song’s “musical glue.” The cycle ends with a mood of despair.
You can hear the premiere recording on Acis' Are Women People? CD with tenor Kyle Knapp and composer/pianist Lori Laitman.