Opus number: 2
Title: Domination of Black (text by Wallace Stevens)
Instrumentation: five solo voices SSATB
Date written: 1971, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina
Length: 3 minutes
Premiere performance: May 17, 1980, Paul Hall, Juilliard School, Daureen Podenski, soprano I, Lynn Yakes, soprano II, Anna Sofus, alto, Jeffrey Thomas, tenor, Greer Grimsley, bass, and George Tsontakis, conductor;
Important subsequent performances: Modus Novus, San Francisco, February 18, 1996, St. Gregory’s Church; and December 18, 1995, San Francisco; April 11, 1984 (?), The Boston Conservatory, Rebecca Gorlin, Margarete Faddick, sopranos 1 + 2, Eriko Terada (3), Rosemary Dowd + Amy Hertel, altos, James Bonarrigo and Joseph Scott, tenors, William DeVane + Bert Yocum, basses, Larry Bell, conducting.
Recording: tape of Boston Conservatory performance in library
Program notes: “Domination of Black” was written in 1971 and like my “Novelette” remained unperformed until 1980. In this concise canonic madrigal I tried to maintain Wallace Stevens’s scansion as well as to project the representational content of the poem, which is, I think, the ominous approach of death. The first performance was given at Juilliard’s Paul Hall in April 1980.
See “A Cry Against the Twilight,” op. 42.
