Nocturnes (2019)
18 minutes
solo tenor, flute, clarinet (bass clarinet), guitar, vibraphone, piano, violin, cello
Premiere: October 2019 - Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, OH, Tim Weiss, conductor
Commissioned by the Zohn Collective with support from the NEA
Text by Feldman Sonnets
PROGRAM NOTE
Nocturnes is a setting of four poems by Irving Feldman, composed in 2019 for tenor Zach Finkelstein and the Zohn Collective. The cycle brings together poems that span several decades of the poet’s career, unified by their nocturnal imagery. The varied structures and poetic techniques of the individual poems compelled me to approach each setting differently. The first song responds to the changing imagery of its three stanzas, represented as three distinct musical landscapes that the tenor windingly navigates. This is the broadest canvas of the cycle. The concise second song pivots between the miniaturized, delicate world of insects and the gently swaying motion characteristic of lullabies. The third song is a continuous process of accelaration and intensification punctuated by a repeated refrain: “And the new night was newer.” The final song is the most aria-like, setting a florid vocal line against often austere music for the ensemble. Although its poem is rather brief, the setting is expansive, with sizable stretches music for instruments alone acting as a frame for the text.
While the hues of the poems and, hence, of the music are prevailingly dark, I do not think of this work as dark in the sense of moody, disconsolate, or despairing. Rather, night in these poems is often rapturous, or enchanted, or an occasion to reflect upon our dearest memories. Hence, brilliant light pierces the darkness in the first and third poems, and accompanies the lone speaker of the fourth poem. The heat, warmth, and glow of human connection—uninterrupted by darkness or even death—suffuses this poetry and has inspired my music. I am eternally grateful to Irving for the opportunity to set his words, which are precious to me.