Good Night for Soprano and Classical Guitar (2010)
Good Night, for classical guitar and soprano, was composed at the request of Michele Fuchs who was looking for a piece based on a poem about children. The text I picked was by Jane Taylor (1783-1824), an English poet famous for writing the words to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
The poem is in three stanzas. The first stanza I set as a lullaby because
of the gentle nature of the words. In the last two stanzas the mother
(or father) is trying to comfort the baby because of the storm outside.
In my setting of these two stanzas the guitar represents the wind and
the rain. I do this by using various ‘extended techniques,’ such as hitting
the strings with my left hand to get various percussive sounds and by
bouncing a guitar pick on the strings. Finally, I repeat the first stanza,
ending with the lullaby.
Score Sample