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Mountain Talk (2016)

soprano and chamber orchestra (single winds & brass, perc, celesta, strings)

4 minutes

Listen (password protected)
Picture
Mountain Talk
by A.R. Ammons

I was going along a dusty highroad when the mountain
across the way
turned me to its silence:

oh I said how come
I don't know your
massive symmetry and rest: nevertheless, said the mountain, would you want
to be
lodged here with
a changeless prospect, risen
to an unalterable view;
so I went on
counting my numberless fingers.
Mountain Talk will hopefully become one song in a set of songs on Ammons poems, but for now, it is just a standalone song. I wrote it for the student orchestra readings at NEC the spring of 2016, also my final semester at Harvard. Ammons' work has been important to me since I first learned about it in Professor Peter Sacks' 20th Century American Poetry course. The same semester as that course, I wrote a string quartet inspired by his poetry (Turn). 

The piece is for soprano and chamber orchestra, though the soprano should have a strong low to mid range also, since this particular song spends a good deal of time in the lower part of the soprano's range, for coloristic purposes. 

Instrumentation:
Flute (+ Piccolo)
Oboe (+ English Horn)
Clarinet in Bb
Bassoon
French Horn in F
Trumpet in C (harmon mute, cup mute, plunger)
Trombone (harmon mute, cup mute, plunger)
Percussion (1 player): Glockenspiel, Medium Suspended Cymbal,

     Crotales, Concert Bass Drum Celesta
Soprano Solo
Strings

     9 Violin I
     8 Violin II
     7 Viola
     6 Cello
     4 Bass 

Score