Program note: Silence
- Elliot Gyger
- Source: The Song Company Haunted Lullabies 30 September 1993
Silence Elliott GYGER (b.1968)
Silence was the first work to be written for the Contemporary Singers and was premiered in
the group's first full concert in 1987. The-piece is a fairly straightforward setting of a
sonnet by Thomas Hood, for six-part choir. The musical style encompasses considerable textural
variety, and the response to the text includes a fair amoun't of word-painting. The opening
melodic idea, consisting basically of the alternation of two notes, returns at the climax,
and again for the final bars; the harmonic and textural context, however, is different on
each appearance.
