Four Dickinson Songs (2014)

For Voice and Piano

Duration: 7

Movement Titles: Of All the Souls | A Dying Eye | If You Were Coming | Wild Nights!

Text: Emily Dickinson (E)

First Performance: 15 July 2014 / Goodheart Hall, the Music Room, Bryn Mawr College, Philadelphia, PA / Lyric Fest / Jeffrey Halili, tenor / Laura Ward, piano

Dedication: "Commissioned by Lyric Fest of Philadelphia, 2014, for Laura Ward."

Publisher: Peermusic Classical

Recording: iTunes | Naxos | Spotify | SMP

Program Note:

If You Were Coming and Wild Nights were composed in January 1993 in New York City. In fall 2013, Laura Ward of the Philadelphia ensemble Lyric Fest asked for a handful of Dickinson settings to round out a program called "Dear March – Come In! – AmericanWomen Poerts in Song." I composed A Dying Eye and Of All the Souls, revised the earlier settings, and collected them into a quarto about love. The group as a whole was commissioned by Lyric Fest with the help of a generous gift from Lauren and Craig Meyer. It is dedicated to Laura Ward. Laura and Jeffrey Halili premiered the songs on 15 July 2014 as part of a concert by Lyric Fest in the music room of Goodheart Hall on the Bryn Mawr campus in Philadelphia.

Selected Review:

There is no let-up in quality with the Four Dickinson Songs, where Hagen catches the sparkle in each poem, including an extraordinary ‘Wild Nights’, and delivers its punchline with a musical solution that turns out to be unexpected—and right.