Faye-Ellen Silverman

Reflections on a Distant Love

Year: 2021

Duration (in minutes): 13'

Difficulty: High (professional)

Category: solo voice(s) with solo instruments

Instruments: mezzo soprano, piano, viola

Publisher: Reflections on a Distant Love

Publisher website: https://www.subitomusic.com/

Purchase score URL: https://www.subitomusic.com/shop/

Description: Reflections on a Distant Love, for mezzo soprano, viola, and piano, is a female perspective on Neil Diamond’s song “Hello Again and also a reflection, from a woman’s point of view, on the suffering of Gretchen/Marguerite in Goethe’s Faust as Gretchen, whose fate inspired so many Romantic era composers, seemed to offer a classical music’s perspective on the Neil Diamond theme. While writing these during the Corona lockdown, I learned that “Hello Again” is considered Diamond's "signature late-career ballad”, which makes 2021 an appropriate time in my life to create these answering songs. To make my Reflections on a Distant Love into a true song cycle, the individual songs are linked musically. Songs 1, 2, and 4 use poetry by Sara Teasdale, while song 3 sets Emily Dickinson. The last song - “It Will Not Change” (Sara Teasdale)- is a song of acceptance. Set in a single mood of calm, it quotes songs 1, 2, and 3 at the end– a memory of the earlier texts. This song’s vocal line begins with the pitches EFABC, another variant of the opening of the cycle. The singer accepts that the memory of a close relationship, poured by the composer into these songs, will survive even death.