for soprano voice and guitar
to texts by Mark Twain
1. A Whole Day Old
2. The Moon
3. It
4. First Sorrow
5. Pink Dust
6. Prayer
When guitarist John Olson and soprano Gioia De Cari commissioned me to write a piece for them, I envi- sioned writing something theatrical that might especially suit Gioia, who is both a singer and an actress. Eventually, I thought of Mark Twain. The great American writer and humorist of substance wrote a short, little-known book called The Diary of Adam and Eve, which is, of course, about the first days of human life on this earth, in Twain’s witty, but touching take on the Bible story. Adam and Eve each write diary entries. I chose several passages from Eve’s diary that convey the sense of constant wonder that she felt because absolutely everything in her world was new.
Setting prose, rather than poetry, is a challenge for a composer because it has neither the innate rhythm nor the lyricism of poetry. On some intuitive level, this challenge led me to a process that allowed the music to evolve mostly from the guitar part. Whereas normally the vocal melody might emerge first, motivated by the text and with the accompaniment then added for support, here the guitar part was the prime mover. An example of this is the last song, which is a passacaglia played by the guitar, providing the ground over which the vocal line can soar. Eve’s Diary was composed in 2015.
