Fictive Music

Author: dg

  • Back to the earth again

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    The Irish poet Æ called Jesse Stuart’s The Man with the Bull-Tongue Plow, from 1934, the greatest collection of American poetry since Leaves of Grass. These five songs premiered ten years ago today, at KMAC Contemporary Museum; and the recordings below (recorded at St. Francis in the Fields, Louisville), sensitively sung by Steven Paul Spears and played…

  • Music for ten

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    Announced recently: a new work for NouLou Chamber Players, whose members include musicians from the Louisville Orchestra and the University of Louisville, will premiere on April 15 of 2024 in an 18th century library. Lacking a title, at the moment, it’s music for 10 players (a dectet or decet or dixtour or…).

  • Apropos six years

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    …since living at Copland House in Cortland Manor, New York (the last residence of Aaron Copland). 2017. Late summer. Three weeks. The world was different — at least mine was. Earth’s curvature hiding what was beyond the horizon. Surrounded by Copland’s (Aaron’s?) earthly treasures, came this “miniature” for Lara Downes: a dialogue between two people…

  • More anthology

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    Thank you to North Star Music for including two songs in their “Modern Music for New Singers” editions: “Orpheus” in the mezzo-soprano vol. 1 book & “The Giver of Stars” in the baritone vol. 1 book. These are robust anthologies (eight, so far, and counting!). (Orpheus was written for the Governor’s School for the Arts…

  • The Giver of Stars a few years later

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    I wrote “The Giver of Stars” at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2020, just on the eve of pandemic shutdowns and disruptions, confusion and the pervasive smell of hand sanitizer. The text by Amy Lowell, could be read on two levels: a prayer of supplication, and/or an allegorical love poem. Being only one…

  • Music with Wendell Berry

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  • postcard, 2018

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  • Video: Apropos – Lara Downes & Leonard Bernstein

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    The intrepid Lara Downes gave a recital of many of her “anniversaries” for Lenny (Bernstein) on June 1, 2018 at Trinity Wall Street and included Apropos, written for her at Copland House last August. This compact miniature is an imagined conversation between Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. The opening and closing melody takes the theme…

  • In the dusk: photos from the premiere

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    of The Porch Over the River at the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. Text by Wendell Berry. Pictured are Chad Sloan (baritone), Carrie RavenStem (clarinet), and Jessica Litwiniec Dorman (piano). Photo credit Alix Mattingly/Kentucky Center.

  • The Porch Over the River

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    Wendell Berry’s prophetic words in “The Porch Over the River” describe a pastoral scene which becomes darkly reflective of our human footprint. It’s as though the sounds of the river, frogs, phoebes, and trees are momentarily interrupted by the passing sound of traffic or the distant whine of a jet engine. But our focus returns…