Details
Year: 2025
Duration: 17'
Instrumentation: soprano, flute, clarinet, string quartet, and piano
Premiere: 8 November, 2025, Westminster-Canterbury of the Blue Ridge, Charlottesville VA by Adelaide Trombetta, Lucia Foshay, James Tobin, Jakob Hofer, Maddison Kirk, Joseph Grof, Sara Phelps, and Ann Hodge
Three Dickinson Poems (2025)
Movements
I. Prelude
II. A Light exists in Spring
III. The Wind begun to rock the Grass
IV. As imperceptibly as Grief
Program Notes
Emily Dickinson’s poetry often captures fleeting moments of nature and emotion with beautiful and striking clarity. Her poetry has always arrested my imagination with its deep themes, rich imagery, and overall unique and distinctive voice. Three Dickinson Poems is a three movement song cycle setting three of her poems: A Light exists in Spring (Poem 812), The Wind begun to rock the Grass (Poem 824, second version), and As imperceptibly as Grief (Poem 1540). The cycle explores the motif of light, including its birth in spring and departure at the start of autumn. The idea of light itself takes on new meaning by means of the arrangement of the poems in the cycle; the light present in the first and last poems could suggest the beginning and end of one's life, and the storm depicted in the central poem, the trials and instability of living.
Written between February and September 2025, Three Dickinson Poems was composed for soprano Adelaide Trombetta and is dedicated to Richard Danielpour, whose encouragement first set the work into motion.