Late one evening at Yaddo -- the artists' retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York -- during the summer of 1983, half-asleep
while reading Romaine Rolland's Jean Christophe at the foot of a broad staircase that flows downwards from an
enormous Tiffany window depicting the woman who, along with her husband, founded the estate, in a pretty white dress bound
tenderly at the waist by a pale blue ribbon, I intuited -- in the same way that a driver 'sees' a child streaking out of a
suburban front yard into the street to capture a ball -- a woman descending that very staircase dressed in the same flowing
white dress. Her right hand was slightly raised, as though holding a candle, a telegram, a poem, or a letter. I believe that
I saw an angel that night -- the spirit of Katrina Trask. Accordingly, when I was asked to compose a work honoring the
spirit of Yaddo on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of its founding, my thoughts turned to that evening in
1983.
The first movement (Wings) is marked 'in puffs, like wind under wings.' It is comprised mainly of rolling
canons -- imitative strands of musical pitches that, when spaced out properly, are to me the aural equivalent of waves of
air or water. The second movement (Prayer) is a lovingly executed fugue based on the ancient plainchant that eventually
became the melody we know as O Come, Emmanuel. It figures as the second movement of my Symphony No. 3. The third movement (Minute Scherzo) is a sixty-second long palindrome based on a synthetic scale with two
augmented seconds in it. The final movement (Couples) is a quick rondo in which every instrument has a musical
doppelganger which shadows it either rhythmically or melodically. On the Yaddo estate there is a stone tower nestled deep in the woods between two small lakes. I composed this movement there.
Composed in celebration of the Corporation of Yaddo's Centennial
Celebration, Angels was first performed by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra on May
7th, 2000 at the Ethical Culture Society of New York.
--- Daron Hagen, 2000
