WINTER WINDOWS : MEZZO-SOPRANO VERSION

WINTER WINDOWS : MEZZO-SOPRANO VERSION
7 Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Piano
on Poems by Walter de la Mare, Robert Frost,
Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Percy Byssche Shelley

Publisher
E. C. Schirmer Music Company

Catalog Number
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Description
WINTER WINDOWS is a cycle of songs that each offer a “window” into a different wintry scene. There is, of course, a snow-man, and there are snowflakes and fields piled high in snow drifts, but the piece also reflects the darkness of winter in the loneliness of a bird calling out in the wintry darkness, a gentle lullaby lovingly watching over a babe in the dark of a winter night, and the welcome warmth of a fireside after a day of work out in the winter woods. Just as Winter, though, goes on towards a new year, the last song of WINTER WINDOWS – setting Robert Frost’s iconic poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” – reminds us that Winter is not an end and that we, like that speaker in Frost’s poem, still have “miles to go before” we sleep.

Text
1 – Winter Night  (Edna St. Vincent Millay)
2 – The Snowflake  (Walter de la Mare)
3 – A Song  (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
4 – The Snow-Man  (Walter de la Mare)
5 – Lully  (Walter de la Mare)
6 – Winter Evening  (Walter de la Mare)
7 – Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening  (Robert Frost)

Vocal Range
A 3  :  F-sharp 5

Duration
18′ 00″

Vocal Tessitura
E 4  :  D 5

Year of Composition
original baritone version 1989
mezzo-soprano version 2023

First Performance
December 16, 2023
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin

First Performers
Madison Barrett, mezzo-soprano
Thomas Kasdorf, piano