daron aric hagen

The loopy, rye and ultimately touching poetic voice of Alice Wirth Gray inspired one of Hagen's wittiest and most congenial song cycles. Opening with pompous majesty, Gravity careens through a quick rondo of tipsy waltz music and declamatory bluster. For Why We Have Cats, the story of a woman who gained pets because her neighbor abandoned her's, Hagen rolls out the suburban lutheran choral music of his youth. The End of Daylight Savings Time prompts a foray into the weird -- a long string of parallel quartal chords paints a foggy nocturnal scene. The petty bureaucrat announcing the committee's decision regarding Ground Squirrel's request for an extension is given high operatic dudgeon -- Hagen alludes to Benjamin Britten's music for the officers in his favourite opera, Billy Budd. The tone turns sinere as Hagen gives a lush chordal accompaniment to Lines After Marianne Moore, which acts as an introduction to the gentle Gymnopaedie of Deer in Mist and Almonds. The final song, The Poetry of Sausgaes: Morcilla, is a frank celebration of the earthly pleasures. Brief quotations from Mozart's C Minor Mass and Bach's Saint Matthew Passion are swept away by the boisterous music with which the song starts as the singer proclaims, 'For us the songs of the sausage, the sun, the tree, the wine, do fine!'

Commissioned by and dedicated to Paul Sperry, the cycle was first performed by Paul Sperry, accompanied by the composer, at the Bruno Walter Auditorium at Lincoln Center in New York City on 24 April 2002.