for high voice and piano
Duration: 11 minutes
Program notes:
Carlisle Floyd once told me “What would we do without Whitman or Dickinson?” An American composer could easily spend his or her entire career setting the texts of these two writers, never exhausting the source. Since each song was composed independently of the others, over the course of three years, adding the Irishman Thomas Moore didn’t seem like a betrayal of trust to the Continental poets. An operatic opening to the cycle moves patiently to a rocking lullaby and concludes wistfully, fading into nothing.
A complete recording of this cycle is available on the album “The Call to Earth.”