Program Note:

Hagen composed Three Silent Things as an affectionate farewell to his closest friends—fellow students at the Curtis Institute of Music Karen Hale (Noteboom), Michaela Paetsch, violist Lisa Ponton, and ‘cellist Robert La Rue. All but Hale were fellow boarders in the Delancey Place brownstone of Sheldon Novick, professor of law and author of respected biographies of Henry James and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Hagen chose the poetry in collaboration with his friends: La Rue suggested the Graves poems, and two by his teacher at the time, Ned Rorem: Do I Love You and Specimen Case, both of which Rorem himself had set. Several were based on settings Hagen had made prior to his arrival in Philadelphia: Pitiless God and the two Adelaide Crapsey poems.

Selected Reviews:

Daron Hagen's Three Silent Things, a setting of 10 poems by such diverse authors as Adelaide Crapsey, Robinson Jeffers, Paul Goodman and Wallace Stevens proved a stately, chimerical work. Scored for piano quartet and soprano, the work is lyrical in its utterance and spare in its rhetoric. There is very little tutti playing, and the soprano is as likely as not to sing an entire poem as a duet with one of the instrumentalists. Mr. Hagen's esthetic is varied but concentrated -- a stark, proclamatory opening leads directly to a gentle cello solo; there are many such surprises throughout the work. Three Silent Things was written for Karen Noteboom, who sang it with a sweet, full tone and an appropriate dignity. [Washington Square Contemporary Music Series.]

— Tim Page, The New York Times, 10/5/86

A couple of the 10 texts he sets are unusual choices, like the Adelaide Crapsey poem from which the title comes. But most of the poets, like Walt Whitman and Robert Graves, have been frequently turned to by American composers. The work begins with a Whitman text set to stern, proclamatory music with hints of 12-tone complexity. Soon the piece shifts modes and wistful tonality predominates. The composer deftly mixes spiky rhythmic restlessness, jagged instrumental lines and crunchy chords. ... Brenda Harris was the sensitive soloist. [Carnegie Recital Hall.]

— Anthony Tommasinni, The New York Times, 6/5/98