Faye-Ellen Silverman

Warm Words for a Cold Evening

Year: 2018

Duration (in minutes): 3'

Difficulty: Medium (college/community)

Category: small chamber ensembles - 2 to 4 players

Instruments: piano

Publisher: Subito Music Corp.

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

Video Links: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23-9GJh_Yuk

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

Description: When thinking about this six-hand piano piece, I was teaching Bartók’s “night music”, a sound landscape that occurs in several of his works. At the same time – late fall - the nights in New York City were getting colder and longer. As I mulled over the idea of night, I came across the Irish blessing “ May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.” I wanted to express this positive sentiment in my work. This beautiful quotation became the main motive of this work – the pitch A from “warm”, followed by D and Eb (from “words”, as S is represented in music by Eb). The work is in two parts, the first more active, and filled with trills (the cold evening) and runs, and the second part based on a more lyrical melody, also coming from the A and D. The work itself ends on the pitch G - the last letter of “evening”.