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- John Harbison
Moments of Vision (1975)
- Associated Music Publishers Inc (World)
- a rec(sopranino rec, b rec, a crumhorn), lute(hurdy gurdy, dulcimer), va da gamba
- Soprano, Tenor (handbells)
- 19 min
- Thomas Hardy
- English
Programme Note
Composer note:
Moments of Vision (1975), for early music ensemble, had a complicated history. The Naumburg Chamber Music Award winners for 1974, the Cambridge Consort, commissioned two pieces, the present piece and Seymour Shifrin’s Renaissance Garland. The group dissolved before the commissions were completed. I withdrew from the formal commission obligation in order to be eligible for future consideration by the foundation, which eventually commissioned my Quintet (1978) for the Aulos Wind Quintet.
When the piece became a "free agent”, I was happy to be able to dedicate it to Seymour Shifrin, my partner in the exploration of the ancient consort, and the maker of a fine Hardy cycle, Satires of Circumstance, which I had conducted early in our friendship. Shifrin observed that Moments of Vision is medieval, and I see the point; there is a bluntness and remoteness about the music that I associate with medieval music. My attachment for the piece is based on this singularity: I never tried anything like it before or since.
The Prelude immediately states the main musical preoccupation, the elaboration in various forms of a Burgundian cadence. This stark and fascinating old formula suggested many combinations, and makes itself felt in all the movements.
There are no dynamic or expression marks in the score, just the notes. In this way, and in the demands on vocal and instrumental intonation and fluency, this is one of the most difficult pieces I have ever composed. But early music performers are the most accustomed to making interpretive decisions from skeletal evidence, and it was this creative partnership that I invited.
Among the other early techniques to be found are the drone in the title setting, the cantus firmus in the first duet, and the final mensuration canon. These have their origins in the texts, poems which seem both ancient and adaptable, like the instruments I have asked to accompany them.
---John Harbison
Moments of Vision (1975), for early music ensemble, had a complicated history. The Naumburg Chamber Music Award winners for 1974, the Cambridge Consort, commissioned two pieces, the present piece and Seymour Shifrin’s Renaissance Garland. The group dissolved before the commissions were completed. I withdrew from the formal commission obligation in order to be eligible for future consideration by the foundation, which eventually commissioned my Quintet (1978) for the Aulos Wind Quintet.
When the piece became a "free agent”, I was happy to be able to dedicate it to Seymour Shifrin, my partner in the exploration of the ancient consort, and the maker of a fine Hardy cycle, Satires of Circumstance, which I had conducted early in our friendship. Shifrin observed that Moments of Vision is medieval, and I see the point; there is a bluntness and remoteness about the music that I associate with medieval music. My attachment for the piece is based on this singularity: I never tried anything like it before or since.
The Prelude immediately states the main musical preoccupation, the elaboration in various forms of a Burgundian cadence. This stark and fascinating old formula suggested many combinations, and makes itself felt in all the movements.
There are no dynamic or expression marks in the score, just the notes. In this way, and in the demands on vocal and instrumental intonation and fluency, this is one of the most difficult pieces I have ever composed. But early music performers are the most accustomed to making interpretive decisions from skeletal evidence, and it was this creative partnership that I invited.
Among the other early techniques to be found are the drone in the title setting, the cantus firmus in the first duet, and the final mensuration canon. These have their origins in the texts, poems which seem both ancient and adaptable, like the instruments I have asked to accompany them.
---John Harbison