Of Challenge and of Love for soprano and piano

Year
1994
Duration
22'
Category
Vocal

Commission: Commissioned by the Aldeburgh Foundation for Lucy Shelton with funding provided by the Rex Foundation
Buy Score: Hendon Music (Boosey & Hawkes)
Manuscripts: Paul Sacher Stiftung
Text Author: John Hollander (English)
Songs: See below

High on Our Tower
Under the Dome
Am Klavier (at the Piano)
Quatrains from Harp Lake
End of a Chapter

Premiere: Jun 23, 1995/ Lucy Shelton, soprano; John Constable, piano/ Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh

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Of Challenge and of Love clip

John Hollander’s poetry has fascinated me for many years because of its poetic skills, its awareness of our cultural past and its wide-ranging modern expressivity. So when Lucy Shelton (whose performances of my work are superb) and the Aldeburgh Festival proposed that I write a cycle for her, I accepted with great pleasure. The choice of the texts from many of Hollander’s books and a type-written script of “Quatrains from Harp Lake” (which John tells me is the Sea of Galilee) are basically focused around the character of that poem with its brief, vividly contrasting quatrains that have an under-current of irony and deep anxiety that is also found in the other four poems in different ways. The score was composed in the last months of 1994 in New York City.

– Elliott Carter

Video (1)

Recordings (3)

The Music of Elliott Carter, Volume Five - Nine Compositions (1994-2002)
Bridge Records 9128 (2002)
Virgil Blackwell, bass clarinet | Charles Rosen, piano | Maureen Gallagher, viola | Speculum Musicae: Stephen Taylor, oboe; Curtis Macomber, violin; Eric Bartlett, cello (+5)
Southwest Chamber Music: Goehr and Carter
Cambria CD 8804 (2000)
Phyllis Bryn-Julson, soprano | Southwest Chamber Music
Lucy Shelton & John Constable: Of Challenge And Of Love: Complete Songs for Solo Voice & Piano by Igor Stravinsky & Elliott Carter
Koch International Classics 3-7425-2-H1 (1997)
Lucy Shelton, soprano | John Constable, piano