Dark Interval

Dark Interval is an ongoing project of songs and chamber music setting texts by the late Jane Tyson Clement, a member of the Bruderhof Community in Rifton, NY. Many of her poems deal with the subjects of nature, love, loss, faith, and art. I had the pleasure of visiting the Bruderhof community in 2004 and they have kindly allowed me the use of her texts.

Dark Interval for chamber ensemble is a 2009 commission for the Mahagonny Ensemble of Vassar College. It contains the title poem, and settings of the poems 'Only a Little Longer' and 'Woodcrest'. It is scored for oboe, clarinet, bassoon, french horn, trombone, double bass, piano, and two singers (mezzo-soprano and baritone) and is approx. 10 minutes.

Dark Interval Introduction is a three-minute solo for saxophone that can be used as a solo introduction to the 'Dark Interval' song or song cycle, or can be programmed on its own. Foreboding and echoing, resonant yet intimate.

Not In These Days (piano and voice) uses a 'decayed waltz' figure in the piano and a melancholic text setting in the voice. "Not now, but when it is too late for gladness, we will remember these days of sunlight..." A sample of this song is below.

"How can we hear the sound of wind though the wind is still?" asks the opening lines of How Can We Hear for piano and voice. A short, simple accompaniment on piano to a deceivingly simple poem that invites us to experience more of the world around us, before it is too late.

You Will Not Know is a sorrowful setting for piano and voice in wandering tonal areas from Tyson's poem on the individuality of grief.

 

All works and material on this site are copyright 2010 Nathan Hall.