This moving group of songs set to 14 writers is a memorial to the composer’s long-time companion. In the composer’s words: The overall theme stresses nostalgia and loss, but also frustration and anger, and finally renewal, albeit renewal through defiance of death. Premiered at Alice Tully Hall in 2002 by baritone Kurt Ollmann and pianist Scott Dunn.
Contents: I: 1. Paradise Lost • Mongolian Idiot • The Bed • The Man With Night Sweats • Memory Unsettled • A Youth in Apparel That Glittered • Waiting for the Barbarians • II: Remembrance of Things Past • Hearing Music at His Mother’s Funeral • He Walks Beneath the Stars • At North Farm • This Room • I Loved You, Atthis • III: Of the Scythians • Night • The Suicide • Death Stands Above Me • Despairing To Be Happy Any More • The Waves
