Home / Compositions / Fenton Songs (Version 1)
Fenton Songs (Version 1)
- Instrumentation
- sop/mezzo-sop,vn,vc,pf
- Year
- 1997
- Duration
- 8:00
- Composed
- (n/a) - 10/12/1997
- Dedication
- Howard Stokar
Fenton Songs are settings of four poems from James Fenton’s recent collection OUT OF DANGER. I undertook these in 1997 as a preparation for setting Fenton’s libretto based on Salman Rushdie’s HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES, an opera project on which we are collaborating; the first performances took place in New York at the Guggenheim Museum on 17 and 18 May, 1998.I see the sequence of poems as proceeding from public to private, from agitation to repose, with local ups and downs along the way.The soprano is accompanied by violin, cello, and piano; the piece lasts about eight minutes.
-Charles Wuorinen, May 1998
