A Winter Come

Description

High Voice, Piano — I was introduced to Howard Moss's poetry through the fine musical settings of his works by Ned Rorem and William Flanagan. Moss’s collections, A Winter Come, seemed to me a natural for a song cycle, which was composed in the fall of 1967 and premiered in Los Angeles by soprano Rose Taylor and pianist Ralph Grierson the following spring. A Winter Come is the first in a series of vocal cycles that has occupied a good deal of my compositional career. The songs are tuneful and direct with much of the music derived from manipulations of the opening motive: E-flat, D-flat, C, B-flat. Howard Moss (1922-1987) was for many years poetry editor of the NEW YORKER. His Selected Poems (Atheneum) received the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry. -- Morten Lauridsen