Mourning Madrigals [14']

Mourning Madrigals was composed in the fall of 1980 in the aftermath of my father’s sudden death. The music traces mourning’s private, tortuous passage through grief from acquiescence to acceptance. The three movement work is based on poems Thomas Hardy wrote in 1912-13 following the death of his wife and on a Gregorian Requiem chant which moved me deeply and became the generator of the piece’s pitch organization