WORK DETAILS

Lament (2010)

Instrumentation: soprano and guitar
Text: Louise Glück
Duration: 7’
Premiere: Tony Arnold (soprano) and Daniel Lippel (guitar)
Guitar International's Classical Guitar Weekend, Cleveland Institute of Music, Cleveland, OH (May 2010)

I have long been drawn to Louise Glück’s poetry, finding in it the quality I feel closest to in music: a sadness that contains, if not joy, elements of hope and solace. Lament is tied to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and the “double loss” therein. When my longtime mentor, Nicholas Maw, passed away last year – we had been out of touch for some time, in part because I was uncertain how to face his failing memory – it struck me that we often experience loss in this way, losing people in more ways than one. Given Nicholas’s masterful writing for voice and guitar, individually and in combination, it seems particularly apt to dedicate this piece to his memory.