Songs Without Words – 3 Parts (2011)

Viola and Piano – 10 mins.

Audio

Score (Free Download)

Program Note

Songs Without Words was compiled for a 2011 recital to give me an opportunity to collaborate again with the king of the viola, Atar Arad. Only the first song was composed with the viola in mind: Muse was written last summer as a gift for Bethany Harper Bernstien, the woman who taught me viola in string class and premiered my Viola Bagatelles 42 years earler. Morning Sunsong is the first big tune in my saxophone concerto Sunscapes. Come, Gentle Night actually does have words, as sung by Juliet while she awaits her groom, unaware of the events that have eternally crossed their stars:

Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow’d night,
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night.