Program Note:   

When asked by Gilda Lyons and Elaine Valby to compose a sizable new work to inaugurate their new trio (the third, lyric member of the group was cellist Robert La Rue) called Seraphim, Hagen reached for Mary Barnard’s (then) new edition of Sappho: a New Translation (University of California Press; May 2019) during an autumn 2004 residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy.

Sappho (ca. 630 BCE-570 BCE) was the Poetess to Homer’s Poet. Legend states that Sappho was married to Cercylas, a wealthy X from the island of Andros, but there is evidence that she self-identified as a lesbian and created a cult devoted to Aphrodite in the capital city of Lesbos, Mytilene. She was, above all, a lyric poet: most of her poems were meant to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre.

Though short-lived as a working-ensemble, the group did premiere the cycle on 23 September 2005 in New York City at the Church of Saint Matthew and Saint Timothy, as part of the inaugural concert of the Phoenix Concert Series, for which Dr. Lyons served as Founding Director, and which went on to present music by over 160 composers between 2005-2019—many rebroadcast over WUOL-Louisville.