FOUR POEMS BY EMILY DICKINSON

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. The lack 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.