'THREE TENSES OF LIGHT' FOR CHORUS AND STRING QUARTET (World Premiere)
Andrea Clearfield has been praised by the New York Times for her "graceful tracery and lively, rhythmically vital writing," the Philadelphia Inquirer for her "compositional wizardry" and "mastery with large choral and instrumental forces," and by the L.A. Times for her "fluid and glistening orchestration". Commissions include works for The Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Orchestra 2001. She has composed ten cantatas for voices and orchestra and is currently working on an opera. Dr. Clearfield was the recipient of a Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and recently awarded 2012 fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in Italy. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and is also the founder of the renowned Philadelphia Salon concert series celebrating its 25th year.
Andrea had this to say about her piece:
“ Three Tenses of Light" is inspired by the beautiful and evocative poetry of Rhina P. Espaillat, the colorful paintings of Andrew Anderson-Bell and the images in my mind’s eye of the rising and falling light over the meadows and marshes of Newburyport, together creating an homage to beginnings and endings of the day and in our lives. The music begins with a simple descending and ascending two-note motive that gives way to sounds reminiscent of nature. The motive develops into longer rising and falling melodies that are propelled from the day’s beginning into bright emotional intensity at afternoon’s peak, lingering momentarily and then fading into darker harmonies; the music is formed into a large arc shape with a coda on the words “light’s benediction.” This work was conceived at the Rockefeller’s Bellagio Center, Lake Como, Italy, where I was in constant awe of the changing light on water.
Program notes by David Yang
RHINA P. ESPAILLAT (b. 1932)
THREE TENSES OF LIGHT
for Andrew Anderson-Bell
Sky, meadow and marsh:
a trinity of waters,
three tenses of light.
Tattered horizon,
the far fringes of morning
where new light rises:
Daylight advancing,
igniting sudden loosestrife,
taking the meadow.
Cloud blue flecked with sun:noon wavering, gold water
fringed with black grasses.
Nothing here to cast
shade, measure the afternoon's
retreat, its fading
fall into darkness
over marsh and meadow. Sky,
you patient watcher
of all creation,
bend to the sleeping water,
embrace it wholly
through the dark hours,
then rise to bring us,
again,
light's benediction.
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