Notturno Suite

Program Notes

I did not set out to write a piece about the moon, or even a set of six. I kept writing, often late at night, until the ideas stopped coming. When the theme for this concert arrived, Beethoven’s Op. 27 No. 2 ‘Moonlight’ became the obvious place to start—a piece everyone already knows, which meant the rest of the piece could start close to home and wander.

My two inspirations for moonlight composers bookend the piece; Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ opens it and Debussy’s Première Rhapsodie closes it. The Gigue grows out of its opening, a piece that’s always struck me as dark despite its reputation as a virtuoso showpiece. Beyond those two, everything here is my own.

The through line emerged on its own, and I only recognized it once the order was set: the suite moves from irregular toward regular. The opening movement won’t sit still. Each following movement is a little more settled. Dance No. 1 sits in E minor, dark but companionable. The Lament descends slowly through octatonic harmonies. Dance No. 2 answers in A-flat minor—about as dark as a key gets—and is the arrival. The Hymn is the slowest and darkest movement—a song over a sighing accompaniment—and the melody from the opening Hommage returns recontextualized. The Gigue is a true tour de force, including a fugue.

The complete result is a suite in a deliberately old shape. The Baroque suite alternated fast and slow dances and closed with a gigue, and I liked working my own harmonic language into that eighteenth-century framework. Most movements are small ternary forms.

Score and parts will be available for purchase after the premiere. Sign up here and I’ll let you know the moment they’re live.