High Bridge, Portrait of Hart Crane and Wilde are the result of considering the lives of Hart Crane and Oscar Wilde as possible operatic subjects. Hence, both of these scores are full of ideas large and small which move from their first associations toward very different ones in constant development.
I discovered Crane’s poetry by accident while studying in Berlin from 1962-63. A German student, who had majored in American literature in the States, recommended Crane as the most eloquent and at times trashy poet he had ever read. High Bridge, in keeping with my source’s assessment, is brash, percussive, and lyrical in quick alteration. With two exceptions I have always been drawn to American literature: Wilde and Goethe. Wilde is the wise voice of universal freedom in the late 19th Century, alas not always so mindful of his own safety. Wilde’s own death is represented in the third movement by a 12-note chord, neither consonant nor dissonant in spacing, absolute neutrality, swept away with a violent timpani flourish: the angel of death on a whirlwind.
As is evident on this recording, my musical language has remained tonal in sometimes direct and extended ways. In both scores, I try to use themes in a manner of constant transformation, as the 19th Century composers found to support their larger and longer forms and to enrich emotional references.
