Instrumentation

Buy the CD

Buy the Score

Check Calendar for Upcoming Performances

When honoring "Spring and Fall" with first prize in their composition competition, the Ohio Federation of Music Clubs had this to say about the piece: "Contemporary music needs such pieces if it is to survive and give any pleasure at all to audiences." Sherry Kloss of The Triangle praised the piece for its "perfect...partnership of the cello and the voice" and the St. Petersburg Times noted it as a "well crafted [piece which is]...most expressive in the plaintive cello part."

The work is currently available on CD from the National Association of Composers.

INSTRUMENTATION
Medium Voice, Cello, Piano

DURATION
5 1/2 minutes

DATE
2003

PREMIERE
11 Dec. 2003
New Music Festival
Kulas Hall
Cleveland Institute of Music
Cleveland, OH
Kimberly Lauritsen,
mezzo-soprano
Peter Myers, cello
Jacob Adams, piano

AWARDS
2004 Ohio Federation of Music Clubs Student Composers Contest

2004 International Tampa Bay Composers' Forum Prize for Excellence in Chamber Music

RECORDING
Greeting from NACUSA
NACUSA Label (purchase)
Kimberly Lauritsen,
mezzo-soprano
Peter Myers, cello
Jacob Adams, piano
Recorded live in Kulas Hall
Cleveland Institute of Music

DEMONSTRATION SCORES & RECORDINGS
Please contact the composer.

Spring and Fall is a setting of Hopkins' poem by the same title.  In the text, the speaker consoles Margaret, who is grieving her first loss (loss of innocence or possibly a death).  The speaker attempts a stoic veneer, but emotion seeps through; the speaker's own struggle is brought out in the rapidly shifting mood of the cello cadenza.  The speaker asks Margaret why she is weeping, concluding that she weeps for a universal human condition, something we all feel but can scarcely name: “It is the blight man was born for, / It is Margaret you mourn for.”  While both instruments engage in musical commentary on the text, the piano is more of a passive observer of the mood; the cello is more closely aligned to the voice and to the speaker's emotional struggle, as he tries to comfort Margaret, and ultimately, himself.

TEXT
Spring and Fall
to a young child

MÁRGARÉT, áre you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

    —Gerard Manley Hopkins

Biography | Works | Concerts | News | Recordings | Links
©2008 Aaron Alon. All Rights Reserved.