18 Novemebr 2003
Merkin Recital Hall, New York City
The Elements String Quartet

string quartet

5'

'Gwen & Earl's Wedding Day, 25 December 1951' is written in my mother's handwriting on the back of the picture on which this five minute elegy is based. She died of cancer about twenty years ago; my father died of heart disease a few weeks before I composed the piece in 2002. I left the home in which I was raised the morning after my other died and did not return until two days after my father's death, at which time my brother and I closed the house and prepared it for sale. This picture was among father's astonishingly few remaining personal effects. The little elegy was commissioned by the Elements String Quartet and premiered by the ennsemble at Merkin Recital Hall in New York City on 18 November 2003.