In My Sky at Twilight

Track Listings

1. Deeper Than All Roses

2. Lament

Editorial Reviews
John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune, December 3, 2002
...Thomas' "songs of love and passion" work by accretion--layering a colorful, often sensuous array of sonorities...

Wynne Delacoma, Chicago Sun-Thomas, December 2, 2002
"In My Sky at Twilight'' is a rhapsodic work, its headlong rush tempered and refined by Thomas' impeccable ear....

Album Description
Certain strains of music and poetry want to remake the physical world. They propose to temper the air to their liking, and toy freely with weather and terrain. The composer or poet inverts the formulas of Euclid; she sabotages gravity. She ceases to be a law-abiding citizen of her landscape. Instead, she strikes a coup against it: her gestures alone soften the ground or stretch trees. Sunlight curves by her voice. Her emotions quake the earth and make it weep.

In 1856, the English critic John Ruskin coined an ungainly phrase for this tendency to transfuse human feeling into natural world. He called it the "pathetic fallacy", an error on part of pathos and "unhinged reason".

But it is an enduring mode of expression, and composer Augusta Read Thomas is a master of it. In her 2002 work In My Sky at Twilight, a human voice is the synaptic switchboard, and 18 instrumental performers form the "whole landscape" which "flushes on a sudden" at its sounding.

Sung here by soprano Christine Brandes, a dedicatee of the score, the vocal part rules the ensemble with lungs and mouth. Voice sways harmony and color through its declamation; everything expands and contracts, freezes or liquefies, in accord with its line.

From a musical perspective, the ensemble itself becomes a world of resonances. The precise thingliness of all these instruments—the bow-hairs and mallets, the blown and struck metal, the pianos pressed and then plucked with flesh and nail—all these acoustic machines become echo-vehicles. In every material but voice, they mirror and inspire the life of the voice.

And so the singer herself becomes Echo’s opposite—not a woman confined to parroting back the sounds of unknowing nature, but a woman able to press those sounds into being herself. The inanimate is animated and begins to move; it prefaces and trails the singer, amplifies and tapers her flight.

This is perhaps the dominant plot of Thomas’s work as a whole. But In My Sky at Twilight is a kind of summa for the composer. No doubt only a temporary one, but one which newly perfects her persistent vision: to dissolve with a single voice the absolute power of nature, and sympathize nature into singing along.

For Thomas this plot is more than a literary conceit, also more than a "style". It exists first in the music, sparked by the composer’s analytic ear. Chords of opposing densities collect in close succession and generate a harmonic current. Gestures surface and crystallize in grades. And from their choreography emerges a kind of unfettered form—form as the shape of change, as the voice’s path through the landscape it has revised.

In My Sky at Twilight

Tracks:

Strings In The Earth And Air l
Dark Leaves
Twilight Turns From Amethyst ll
Yellow Keys
At That Hour When All Things Have Repose
When The Sky Star Goes Forth In Heaven lV
Lean Out Of The Window, Goldenhair V
I Would In That Sweet Bosom Be Vl
Sad Austerities
My Love Is In A Light Attire Vll
Who Goes Amid The Green Wood Vlll
Rich Apparel
Winds Of May, That Dance On The Sea lX
Silvery Arches
Bright Cap And Streamers X
Bid Adieu Xl
What Counsel Has The Hooded Moon Xll
Go Seek Her Out Courteouly Xlll
Nightdew
My Dove, My Beautiful One XlV
From Dewey Dreams, My Soul, Arise XV
The Flowery Bells Of Morn
O Cool Is The Valley Now XVl
Thrushes Calling
Because Your Voice Was At My Side XVll
Stranger
O Sweetheart, Hear You XVlll

Average customer rating:

A dazzling array of "colors"

In My Sky at Twilight

Manufacturer: ART2002
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Classical | Indie Music | Stores | Music

General | Classical | Styles | Music
ASIN: B0000VBUFS
Release Date: 2003-10-29

Tracks:

Deeper Than All Roses
Lament

Album Description

Certain strains of music and poetry want to remake the physical world. They propose to temper the air to their liking, and toy freely with weather and terrain. The composer or poet inverts the formulas of Euclid; she sabotages gravity. She ceases to be a law-abiding citizen of her landscape. Instead, she strikes a coup against it: her gestures alone soften the ground or stretch trees. Sunlight curves by her voice. Her emotions quake the earth and make it weep.

And so the singer herself becomes Echo's opposite—not a woman confined to parroting back the sounds of unknowing nature, but a woman able to press those sounds into being herself. The inanimate is animated and begins to move; it prefaces and trails the singer, amplifies and tapers her flight.

This is perhaps the dominant plot of Thomas's work as a whole. But In My Sky at Twilight is a kind of summa for the composer. No doubt only a temporary one, but one which newly perfects her persistent vision: to dissolve with a single voice the absolute power of nature, and sympathize nature into singing along.

For Thomas this plot is more than a literary conceit, also more than a "style". It exists first in the music, sparked by the composer's analytic ear. Chords of opposing densities collect in close succession and generate a harmonic current. Gestures surface and crystallize in grades. And from their choreography emerges a kind of unfettered form—form as the shape of change, as the voice's path through the landscape it has revised.

Customer Reviews:

A dazzling array of "colors".......2006-03-08

The attention of the listener is held by the immense variety of effects: splashes of sound, jagged rhythms, solo instruments quarreling and teasing, the singer engaging them in play as she soars above them where the stratosphere is HER territory! It is hard not to speak in visual terms because Thomas shows off the instruments so wonderfully in a dazzling array of "colors" paced carefully so we can absorb each as it comes along. The singer's huge skips are lovely and effortless, perfectly matched to the challenge of the voice being the most beautiful of the "instruments"! The short poems, often erotic, were taken from a variety of sources.

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