Ode to a Nightingale
Rebekah Driscoll
About this work:
The text for Ode to a Nightingale is taken from a poem of the same name by John Keats. Writing in the spring of 1819, the twenty-three-year-old Keats had watched his brother die of tuberculosis only a few months earlier and was now ill himself. The poem expresses Keats' lifelong love of nature but also a revulsion to the natural world and a desire to escape from it. This piece aims to reflect those simultaneous and contradictory emotions without trying to reconcile them.
This work was funded in part by the Composer Assistance Program of the American Music Center.
Year composed: 2004
Duration: 00:09:00
Ensemble type: Chorus, with or without Solo Voices:Chorus with One Non-Keyboard Instrument
Instrumentation: ,1 Cello soloist(s), 1 S, 1 A, 1 T, 1 B