FOUR POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON

Composer:

Allan Blank

Instrumentation freestyle:

Soprano, flute, clarinet

Year Authored:

1974

Duration (min):

Alternate Title:

FOUR POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON

Movements-Titles:

How happy is the little stone

Movements-Titles:

In this short life

Movements-Titles:

Surgeons must be very careful

Movements-Titles:

Nature is what we see

Text Source/Author:

Text:Emily Dickinson:PD

Recording:

Scarborough Chamber Players; Soprano Bonnie Scarpelli

Angular, taut, centrifugal, highly dramatic. The composer sculpts every syllable of the romantic recluse's spare verse, and surrounds the straining singer with virtuoso woodwind rustling reminiscent of the "harmony of nature" that is the subject of the final poem. TH elack of a piano or other harmony instrument in this work, makes the texture unforgiving of miscalculation. Blank saves the flute-clarinet duet for the two outer songs, restricting the accompaniment of the central two to flute and then to clarinet alone. His use of tritones as structural points is familiar, but his use of unisons, octaves and other intervals considered consonant, highlights the complex textural interplay of the three lines.

Publisher:

ACA

Publisher URL:

American Composers Alliance