daron aric hagen

Commissioned by the Bloomingdale School of Music in New York City, the Nocturne was completed on 20 March 2000 in New York City. It is a heavily-revised, final version of Hagen's Romance for Piano and Orchestra (1991) which he premiered on 5 April 1991 as piano soloist with the Hudson Valley Philharmonic, Leon Botstein conducting. Hagen withdrew the Romance immediately after the premiere and set it aside for revisions.

The resulting work is scored for either string quintet (string quartet, plus a contrabass) or string orchestra, and consists of a number of, in the composer's words, 'nocturnal variations' based on a tune given at the outset by the piano.