Darker (2001) for soprano and piano

Materials

Unfortunately, I am unable to make perusal scores or recordings of this work available online. Please contact me to obtain these materials.

text by Mark Strand



Duration: 7.5 minutes

About

With this setting of Mark Strand's poem, I wanted to write a piece that reflected my own experience as a reader.



This poem fascinates me because Strand builds an incredibly rich and complex interweaving of imagery and form out of short phrases, simple words, and bare language. None of the seven short fragments quite make sense on their own; each sets up an image of some sort which isn't exactly logical, for which I can't construct a mental picture. Yet while the fragments are undeniably interconnected, it is also not quite clear how they relate to one another. There are too many gaps to fill in, too much is missing.



Darker was written for Amy Justman.

Performance History

  • Columbia Composers; Amy Justman, soprano; Jason Freeman, piano (November 2001)
  • Anti-Social Music; Amy Justman, soprano; Jason Freeman, piano (December 2001)