The New Moon for Double Mixed Choir (Satb-Satb), Singing Glasses and Chimes: Choral Octavo

By Eriks Ešenvalds

The New Moon was Eriks Esenvalds' contribution to Moon Songs, a 2012 collection of pieces about the moon by ten Latvian composers that was commissioned by the outstanding Riga-based youth choir Kamer...".

The words are by the troubled and tragic Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sara Teasdale, who died by her own hand in 1933, and whom Esenvalds has set on a number of occasions.

The opening chorale is a forthright one, accusing and angry, its diatonic dissonances intensified by sidesteps into homophonic canon. But as the moon is caught sight of 'over the factories ... in the cloudy seas', the texture itself clouds over as the canonic iterations are gradually subsumed into an oscillating pair of thick, quiet chords. From the hard-won stillness a new chorale emerges as the 'maiden moon wakes up in the sky' (the moon is male in Latvian mythology, but not here). Tuned wine glasses and chimes create an other-worldly halo around this wondrous apparition, which eventually recedes into unresolved nothingness, as the afterglow resonates into silence. -from notes by Gabriel Jackson (C)"

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0697952665
• ISBN13: 9790697952669
• Release Date: February 2023
• Publisher: Alfred Music
• Length: 12 Pages