Love Thricewise

Love, thricewise was the winner of the 2009 Pacific Chorale Young Composers Competition. It was premiered in February 2010 under the baton of Robert Istad by the John Alexander Singers. The first movement, "Liquor and lacquer," sets Witter Bynner's "Opus 6" and depicts infatuation through flighty changes of meter and sudden shifts of mode. The second, entitled "An amethyst remembrance" and based on a poem by Emily Dickinson, is built around a false cadence on the words "T will keep." It is regretful, slowly building to an anguished climax and wistfully fading away. Finally, "Kinsfolk" takes Sidney Lanier's "A Song of Love" as its text. It is both a lighthearted reflection on the paradoxical and complementary relationship between love and pain, and a pining for love. The first two stanzas of "Kinsfolk" pit the tenors and basses, who deliver the first stanza’s melody, against the sopranos and altos, who answer in the second stanza with the same melody in a key a tritone away from that of the first. The third stanza is a fugato on the same melody, culminating in a fervid fortissimo. Duration approx. 6:30