Title: The Diurnal Cycle

Instruments: SATB Soloists, Piano

Program Notes:

The Diurnal Cycle began as a set of three songs for bass-baritone that I wrote in 2003 that were themed around night-time activities. I enjoyed that process, and so wrote three tenor songs (evening), followed by three soprano and alto sets (morning and afternoon, respectively). In 2007, I decided that it would be nice to have some interwoven quartets, and to round the project out with a larger quartet on each end. During the writing of these sections, I thought it would be interesting to assign each singer a character (based on clichéd ideas about each of the voice parts), and to have those characters interact in such a way that what seems like an evening of song cycles is deconstructed and takes on new significance.