While Autumn Scatters His Departing Gleams (2021–2022)
Five songs for mezzo-soprano and piano
Text: James Thomson
Duration: c. 18 mins.
While Autumn Scatters His Departing Gleams is the second in a series of five-song seasonal sets for mezzo-soprano and piano of excerpts from The Seasons by the 18th-century Scots poet and playwright, James Thomson. Encapsulating the bittersweet quality of Autumn, when the abundance of harvest marks the end of the growing season and the slow transition to Winter, the text delves into the richness of the bounty and the gradual waning of light and vigor through a picturesque exploration of its effects on flora and fauna.While the Drowsy World Lies Lost in Sleep (2013–2018)
Five songs for mezzo-soprano and piano
Text: James Thomson
Duration: c. 16 mins.
The last three songs of this set of excerpts from the “Winter” section of James Thomson’s The Seasons, were written for a New Music DePaul concert commemorating the centennial of the DePaul University School of Music in 2013, with the complete five-song set being premiered on an ALEA III concert in Boston in 2018. These selections capture the half-light gloom of the season, ending with the personification of “Winter” as despotic ruler, subjugating half the world in icy misery. The reign of this “grim tyrant” is presented in sardonic majesty in both the text and the music. This ongoing work will eventually consist of a five-song set for each of the four seasons.How Curious the Light Behaves (2016)
Soprano, clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano four-hand
Text: Anonymous, Irish
Duration: c. 5 mins.
How Curious the Light Behaves was written for the Virtuoso Soloists, by whom it was premiered on a five-city tour of Portugal in July, 2016. The work is a setting for soprano and mixed ensemble of the first half of an anonymous Irish poem, which explores the theme of how one deals with the constant fear of loved-ones drowning, that is universal to any culture based on working the sea. The structure of the poem is similar to a Welsh Cyhydedd hir, but longer, with the first three lines of each quatrain (eight syllables) rhyming. The last line (six syllables) of each pair of quatrains concludes with a singular end-rhyme, linking them into a stanza.
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The phrase structure of the setting parses into nine-measure groups, consisting of repeated cells of differing lengths, for various configurations of the ensemble, creating a gentle, undulating, isorhythmic effect.Sangis off Wyntir (2004)
Three songs for mezzo-soprano, flute, viola and harp
Text: William Dunbar
Duration: c. 8 mins.
Written for the Chicago-based ensemble, Pinotage, by whom the work was premiered on a Chicago Composers’ Consortium concert in 2004, the work exploits the similarity of the ensemble’s instrumentation with a traditional celtic folk-ensemble. Sangis off Wyntir sets three stanzas from the poem, Meditatioun in Wyntir, by the late-15th century Scots poet, William Dunbar, in the famous Scots Makkars dialect. The stanzas are set to a different, traditional Scots folk tune in each of three separate movements. The first movement employs the Gaelic lament, Bheir mo shoraidh thar ghunnaidh, which in the original, tells the story of bitter loss over a lover’s death. Three laments of the late-18th century renown fiddler/composer, Niel Gow, interleave to form the second movement. The text is set to the Lamentation for James Moray, Esq. of Abercarney, layered with the Lament for his Second Wife in the flute, and the Lament for the Death of his Brother Donald in the viola, in different tempos and meters, all over a calm, yet relentless ostinato in the harp. The third and final movement treats the popular 18th-century Macpherson’s Rant, including at one point, the refrain in triple canon in heterophony between the voice, flute and viola, against the harp quietly intoning the verse. The work ends with the return of hope at the promise of the reappearance of Summer, with a fusion of motives from the rant, woven with a strathspey and reel of the 19th-century composer, Alexander Walker.