Karim Al-Zand

composer

date

1997

duration

13 minutes

instrumentation

mezzo-soprano, flute (alto flute), harp, viola

commission

Fromm Foundation

awards

SOCAN National Young Composers Competition 1998;
ASCAP/SCI Student Commissioning Program, Regional Winner;
Collegium Novum Young Composers Competition (1st Prize)

movements

I. February
2. Winter Hills
3. View From My WIndow
4. Thaw

premiere

December 16, 1997
Jacqueline Zander, mezzo-soprano;
Virginia Crumb, harp;
Susan Gall, flute;
Scott Woolweaver, viola

Sanders Theatre
Cambridge MA

Winter Scenes

four songs on poetry of D. G. Jones

about the piece:

The piece was a commissioned to be presented to a large undergraduate music class at Harvard University called ‘First Nights’, taught by Thomas Kelly. The course, designed for non-music majors, focuses on five famous pieces of music, both as woks of art and as moments of cultural history: Monteverdi’s Orfeo, Handel’s Messiah, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. In addition to analytical listening and examination of the music, they read many contemporary source documents about the premieres such as letters, diaries, reviews and the like. At the end of the term a composer is commissioned to write a new work that is both rehearsed and premiered in the class.

imageThe four poems which comprise Winter Scenes are by the esteemed Canadian poet D. G. Jones (pictured left) and are taken from diverse collections, though they are united by a common theme: winter. They are arranged in a chronological or ‘seasonal’ order, beginning with the cold of deep winter in February, the first poem, through to the rejuvenation of spring in Thaw, the last. The two longer poems frame the two inner, very brief poems, which are like ‘vignettes.’ In keeping with the nature of the commission, some compositional details are included which served a pedagogical purpose: an inverted canon (in Winter Hills), a passacaglia (in February), pitch palindromes (in View From My Window), and modes of limited transposition (in Thaw).

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