LAMENT

Composed: 2002
Commission: The Rocky River Chamber Music Society, for the Franklin Cohen family
Premiere: Rocky River Chamber Music series, Franklin, Lynnette, Diane, Alex Cohen, April 29, 2002
Duration: 18 minutes
Instrumentation:  Quartet for violin, clarinet, bassoon (or cello), percussion

I.  Prelude
II. Unfinished Song
III. Lament
IV. Searching – Revolving

This work was begun in early October 2001, three weeks after September 11.  I found that there was no way for me to compose without attempting to express in some way the numbness, anguish, bewilderment, and the beginning vague assimilation of a national life that would be changed.

Going from the first to the fourth movement through different states of before and after, the Prelude represents a premonition of worse things to come caused by continual low-level violence.  In the second movement a simple song, like an uncomplicated life, is begun.  But it is stopped abruptly and will never be continued or finished.  Movement three is a lament and reaction to the violent attack.  Like a conversation amongst people discussing the act of violence, each shares his/her experiences, thoughts and anguish.  There are lulls where no one can speak, or everyone is lost in thought, then sharing of thoughts and grief continue.  The fourth movement is a continual maze of searching for answers, revolving with the questions (and answers) of why, wishing for life as it was before, and searching for life as it will be now.

Lament was commissioned by the Rocky River Chamber Music Society and was written for and is dedicated to Franklin, Lynette, Diana, and Alex Cohen.

REVIEWS

"It is a beautifully moody work representing the sensations of that day that began with such beauty and continued with such horror with great sensitivity and a minimum of descriptive emphasis, despite the percussion."  - American Record Guide, 2004

“That nine-minute (third) movement reflects personal reactions to the attacks, and finds an orchestral range of color and dynamic to try and help calibrate the unthinkable expressive scale these events would seem to imply. The preceding ‘Unfinished Song’ sets poignant clarinet, violin, and bassoon melodies against a background of hopeful-sounding ostinatos, slowed and dissipated once the discomforting, quiet percussion swishes start. It’s as if childhood just evaporated, like ether. The brief, dark, Prelude suggests the roots of violence were already present everywhere, while planting the thematic seeds of all the music’s own later development; the final ‘Searching-Revolving’ is a cogent piece of involved musical argument, with a later, dance-of-death pas de quatre - Stravinsky waiting in the wings - and a jagged ending. This is not a typical memorial piece. There is no keening or grief, nor Slavic passion, and it took several hearings before I saw beneath this music’s often-optimistic instrumental sheen and the energetic motivic exchanges. It’s engaging, just heard as chamber music. But it is deep, and conveys the life-goes-on-but-not-quite-the-same feelings of the era, better than much else I can think of. There has to be a future, somehow.” - Paul Ingram, Fanfare, The Magazine for Serious Record Collectors, 2004