“Sonnet 30”, for voice and piano (2017)
Program Note
A melancholy and nocturnal setting of Shakespeare’s text, this piece pays tribute to the love of unwavering and joyful friendship. The song is metrically and harmonically free, with fleeting references to tonal harmony and regular meter. It was premiered by Ashleigh Sizemore on March 6th, 2018 at the University of Oregon’s Beall Hall.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
And moan th’ expense of many a vanish’d sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor’d, and sorrows end.
William Shakespeare