Original in the collections of the Hampton University Archives.
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Confide In Sleep Eternal: A Dramatic Poem for Soprano
and Piano was completed in 1983, the year that Jon Michael Spencer
completed his doctoral degree in music composition at Washington University
in St. Louis, Missouri. The text was written in 1979 while Spencer was
working on his Master's degree at Washington University and is included
in his book, Self-made
& Blues-rich. The music is atonal, and highly contrapuntal
rhythms mark the spatial arrangement of the vocal and piano lines. There
are sometimes different meters occuring simultaneously in the two parts
which makes the melodic and supporting lines seem independent of one another
to the utmost extreme. Relationships among motivic and rhythmic statements
unify the work, both within and between the vocal and piano parts. Confide
In Sleep Eternal is a difficult and esoteric work which synthesizes
jazz, blues, art song, Negro spiritual, and contemporary compositional
styles.
Original in the collections of the Hampton University Archives. |
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