Do Not Go Gentle
Charles Griffin
About this work:
This piece for two pianos won an ASCAP Foundation/Morton Gould Prize in 1994 and was premiered by Amy and Sara Hamann in Minneapolis.
Do Not Go Gentle was written as a memorial for my mother, Constance Mary Barrett, who died of cancer on September 15, 1992, three months before her fiftieth birthday. The sonata takes its title from the Dylan Thomas poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," in which he beseeches his dying father to "rage, rage against the dying of the light." At the center of the work is a motive or cell that represents a cancer cell, and forms the basis of the entire composition, expanding, and in a sense, consuming it.
Year composed: 1993
Duration: 00:13:00
Ensemble type: Keyboard:Two Pianos, 4 or More Hands
Instrumentation: 2 Piano