Deep Midnight
Gregg Wramage
About this work:
Selected by David Zinman for the 2000 Aspen Music Festival Jacob Druckman Composition Prize, premiered by the Aspen Sinfonia and Daniel Hege, 8/00. Also performed by Lawrence Leighton Smith and the New Jersey Symphony, 7/02. Published by the composer. For further information about this work, please contact Gregg Wramage at: gwramage@hotmail.com; 718 238-9485; 28 Marine Ave., Apt. 5H, Brooklyn, NY 11209. Program note: From the first time I encountered his work in my early twenties, the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche have been an important of my spiritual life. Passages from two of his works served as the inspiration for both the pieces I composed in 1998, Brilliant Mirrors, for wind quintet, and Deep Midnight, for orchestra. The passage which inspired Deep Midnight is from Nietzsche’s most famous work, Also Sprach Zarathustra, which I happened to be reading in the spring of 1998. This was a particularly dark period in my personal life, as I had recently lost my father to lung cancer in the October of 1997. During this time, I was struggling to reconcile an optimistic, life-affirming view of human existence with the sorrow, loss, and awareness of physical suffering I had experienced throughout my father’s illness and after his death. When I read the aforementioned passage from Zarathustra, it offered not only a possible solution to the conflict in which I was engaged, but also challenged me to rethink my entire notion of how to approach and experience my life, from both an emotional and spiritual point of view. In particular, I became almost obsessed with the lines “reach out for deeper happiness, for deeper unhappiness”, and felt that if I could understand and begin to “live” these words, I would perhaps be able to embrace my sadness and loss, therefore enabling myself to experience all of the emotions in my life more fully. Being a composer, I thought that the best way for me to approach Nietzsche’s words would be through my own music. Having said that, it is important to note that Deep Midnight is not an attempt to musically express the Nietzschean “deeper happiness” and deeper unhappiness” of the aforementioned passage, but rather, an attempt to express in music what it felt like for me to acknowledge, accept, and begin to understand the meaning of these words and all of the ramifications they would have on my future life.
Year composed: 1998
Duration: 00:08:00
Ensemble type: Orchestra:Standard Orchestra
Instrumentation: 3 Flute, 3 Oboe, 3 Clarinet, 3 Bassoon, 4 Horn in F, 3 Trumpet, 2 Trombone, 1 Bass Trombone, 1 Tuba, 1 Timpani, 4 Percussion (General), 1 Piano, 1 Strings (General), 1 Harp
Instrumentation notes: 3rd flute doubles piccolo, 3rd oboe doubles English Horn, 3rd clarinet doubles B-flat Bass clarinet, 3rd bassoon doubles contrabassoon.