Two Emily Dickinson Settings

Written for Soprano and Tenor soloists and SATB chours.
These two short Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) settings, commissioned by Craig Hella Johnson and Conspirare for their September 2007 concert series in Texas, were designed toframe an evening’s programme rather like a compositional ‘inhalation’ and ‘exhalation’, a crescendo and decrescendo or a prelude and postlude. Densely textured, the music aims to hint at the myriad readings Dickinson’ssurface-simple poetry yields in its many readers. Each setting uses a solo soprano and tenor, their voices referencing the polarities inherent in each poem (‘sun’ and ‘shade’; ‘love and hate’).