Spring Nocturne (2023)
baritone voice, piano
c. 4 minutes 30 seconds
text by Amy Lowell
Composed for the Cleveland Composers Guild 2023 Creativity: Learning Through Experience Project
Premiered by Michael Temesi (baritone) and Lydia Yu (piano)
The Music Settlement, Cleveland, OH, 14 May 2023
c. 4 minutes 30 seconds
text by Amy Lowell
Composed for the Cleveland Composers Guild 2023 Creativity: Learning Through Experience Project
Premiered by Michael Temesi (baritone) and Lydia Yu (piano)
The Music Settlement, Cleveland, OH, 14 May 2023
Spring Nocturne (2023) was composed for the 2023 Cleveland Composer’s Guild Creativity: Learning Through Experience Project. In my conversations with Michael, the baritone for whom I composed this piece, we spoke of nature, text painting, e.e. cummings (who was influenced by Amy Lowell!), and Chopin’s nocturnes. Amy Lowell’s “Spring Day,” from Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), seemed to touch on all of these topics in one way or another. In my setting of her text, a rowdy opening gives way to an ethereal lullaby that welcomes the freshness of spring.
My thanks go to Michael Temesi for the conversations that sparked the creation of this piece, and for bringing my music to life.
from “Spring Day, V. Night and Sleep” (1916)
The day takes her ease in slippered yellow.
Electric signs gleam out along the shop fronts.
They grow, and grow, and blow into patterns of fire-flowers.
Trades scream in spots of light at the unruffled night.
But the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours?
The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air.
Wrap me close, sheets of lavender.
Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears.
The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters queer tales of old days, and cobbled streets,
and youths leaping their horses down marble stairways.
Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky
when it is fresh-washed and fair...
I smell the stars...
they are like tulips and narcissus...
I smell them in the air.
My thanks go to Michael Temesi for the conversations that sparked the creation of this piece, and for bringing my music to life.
from “Spring Day, V. Night and Sleep” (1916)
The day takes her ease in slippered yellow.
Electric signs gleam out along the shop fronts.
They grow, and grow, and blow into patterns of fire-flowers.
Trades scream in spots of light at the unruffled night.
But the sky is high and has her own stars, why should she heed ours?
The night is fresh-washed and fair and there is a whiff of flowers in the air.
Wrap me close, sheets of lavender.
Pour your blue and purple dreams into my ears.
The breeze whispers at the shutters and mutters queer tales of old days, and cobbled streets,
and youths leaping their horses down marble stairways.
Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky
when it is fresh-washed and fair...
I smell the stars...
they are like tulips and narcissus...
I smell them in the air.