Two Songs – movement I & II

Type
Piece
Composer
Alexander Dmitriev
Text
Joseph Brodsky
Year Composed
2000
Pages
12
Minutes
3:49
Language
English
Voicing
6 part mixed chorus
Sacred or Secular
Secular
Mood
Rhythmic, with steady energy; Sparse, distant, minimal; Caring, warm
Description

In Two Songs, Alexander Dmitriev sets two poems by Joseph Brodsky, winner of the 1987 Nobel Prize for Literature. Brodsky, a native of Russia, became a U.S. citizen in 1977, and, though he wrote most of his poetry in Russian, wrote these two poems in English. Dmitriev sets the texts – which deal with love and loss – in a gently rolling, mostly homophonic style that captures the nuances of the text without obscuring the words themselves. His use of the Dies irae chant in Törnfallet underscores the preoccupation with death underlying Brodsky’s elegiac poems.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yRCUR827rmllB5kp1KTsTjs5brsjKNss
Audio Credit
Umberto Belfiore, video and recording
Group
C3LA
Performances
C3LA: May 2018 (Conversations with Strangers)