In my personal mythology, the moon watches our earthly endeavors, and sometimes dreams our days into existence. I am sure that the moon was moved by the exquisite playing of Jacqueline du Pré, whose performing life was tragically cut short by multiple sclerosis. It’s possible that du Pré’s definitive version of the Elgar Cello Concerto still echoes in the moon’s dreams.
With this background in mind, I asked Denise Newman to create a text. I’ve also enjoyed Rafael Jesús González’s bilingual collection La musa lunática / The Lunatic Muse for many years, and one poem in particular (Sometimes the Full Moon) begged to be included in this dream. Denise’s and Rafael’s words bounce off each other in wonderful ways.
Musically, the ghost of Elgar’s concerto hovers over the piece. Fragments of its motives pop out of the texture at several points in the work. As is typical in dreams, things become obscured: words sometimes give way to sung phonemes (sounds with no literal meaning), or the Spanish and English versions of González’s poem are mixed. The music that opens and closes the piece is somewhat elegiac, surrounding a quicksilver middle section inspired by the couplet: