When Time Is Over (2009)

for soprano and piano
about 8”00

Pre­miere at Mannes Col­lege
New York City
Feb­ru­ary 15, 2009

As a grad­u­ate stu­dent I have been asked to con­sider many of the big philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions. These are com­mon, time­less ques­tions that seem unan­swer­able by sci­en­tific inquiry or philo­soph­i­cal knowl­edge: our larger pur­pose, the neces­sity (or not?) of suf­fer­ing, the inevitabil­ity of death.

I pro­pose that such ques­tions are best answered, if they can be at all, by art. With these thoughts in mind, I have assem­bled these four poems of Emily Dick­in­son into a song cycle.

To me, the crux of this set is in the fourth move­ment, when the singer states, ‚ÄúI shall know why, when time is over, and I have ceased to won­der why…‚Äù

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