A Poe Fantasia (2010)

for high voice and piano
about 7”00

Pre­miere at Saint Peters at the Cit­i­group Cen­ter
New York City
Feb­ru­ary 2, 2010

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I have always con­sid­ered Poe a chal­lenge to set musi­cally; his texts are full of rhythm and meter, and I think a com­poser is fool­hardy to add any­thing to Poe‚Äôs rich, musi­cal lan­guage. Still, I was encour­aged to look at Poe again by a good, trusted friend, and I dis­cov­ered two lesser known poems that I really enjoyed: ‚ÄúTo the River‚Äù and ‚ÄúAlone.‚Äù One of my favorite poems of Poe is ‚ÄúA Dream Within a Dream‚Äù and I con­sid­ered break­ing up its two stan­zas into two move­ments. Once I had thought of this idea, the col­lec­tion came together.

These songs are very lyri­cal and have dif­fer­ent shift­ing moods within the songs.

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