A Kunitzian Feast: Song Cycle for Baritone and Chamber EnsembleDoctoral Thesis. Five poems by Stanley Kunitz set as a Song Cycle, each one with instrumentation drawing from baritone, flute, oboe, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano. The poems begin with the first in his collected life's works, and end with the last poem in the collection. 'Change,' 'Lovers,' 'Relentlessly,' 'The Layers,' and 'Touch Me,' comprise the body of the selected works to be set, with full permission from the author's publisher.Amaranthine Sighs: Three Canticles for ElectronicsA three-movement (I. Elpis, II. Pistis, III. Agape) piece for electronic media. This piece uses no words but the electronic media is sampled from natural sounds such as bird calls, fish song, and human voice, in addition to the sounds of instruments such as strings and bells. It was inspired by the scriptual letters of the Apostle Paul, and specifically this biblical verse: I Corinthians 13:13... "And these things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love." Each movement corresponds with one of these three eternal themes.Voices of TerezinSATB Choral piece based on texts written by children at Terezin Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust. Terezin was a built as a front; ambassadors from other European nations were brought there by the Nazis to be convinced that the Jews were being treated humanely. One provision the Nazis were proud to show was the daily schooling of the children in the camp by Jewish teachers in various subjects, including art and poetry. The text I am setting was produced in these classes. Devastatingly, almost everyone who passed through the camp did not survive the Nazi's meticulous wrath; Terezin was just a short stop on the way to Auschwitz and other death camps. I see this piece as a way to give these children the voice that was prematurely extinguished, a way to allow their thoughts, dreams, and fears --- evidence of their battered innocence --- to live on, to be both shared and remembered. |
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