(visit http://www.carlschimmel.com to order score and parts)
These poems' intermingling of dark humor with fantastical and colorful imagery held a strong appeal for me when I decided to set them. The way in which the images are ranged like watercolors in a gallery lends a certain stream-of-consciousness to each movement. However, each song (and indeed the whole set) is unified by small recurring motives and melodic and harmonic cells. Moreover, I do not shy from the use of conventional musical devices, often taking a neo-Romantic approach to cadence, phrasing, consonance and dissonance. This is particularly true in the last movement, in which a careful and informed listener may detect multiple references to the music of Debussy; I suppose I have in this way attempted to parallel Tate’s postmodern method of juxtaposing fleeting visions of the familiar, as a means of creating a new and vivid universe.
