Twilight, Goodbye, Peace by Stanley M. Hoffman Small Ensemble - Digital Sheet Music

Twilight, Goodbye, Peace

Twilight, Goodbye, Peace is dedicated to low flutes virtuoso Peter Sheridan. It was begun in 2013 and completed in 2016; the total duration is 6:41. The texts by Solomon Ibn Gabriol, Samuel L. Clemens (aka Mark Twain), and one attributed to Fra Giovanni Giocondo but probably written by Ernest Temple Hargrove, take the listener on a journey from grief/death to hope/heaven. Themusical language is unapologetically chromatic. Other than perhaps the most academic of composers these days, chromaticism has largely fallen into disuse. Although the vast majority of my music written since around 1998 is either tonal or more often modal, I occasionally return to a chromatically saturated musical language to express certain emotions through sounds that are alien to thosemusical languages. I did so in the present title with the intent of painting the three texts more poignantly. While most passages feature familiar-sounding triads and octaves, the melodies, harmonies and cadences sound unfamiliar. It is to be hoped that the listener will find the music both moving and engaging, challenging one to listen to these three songs in new ways.-Stanley M. Hoffman, 9/11/2016, fifteen years after 9/11