About This Piece:
Inspired by a moving poem written by Christina Rossetti, this piece explores feelings of loneliness and longing. With a primarily octatonic harmonic language and largely contrapuntal piano texture, I searched for ways to color the octatonic collection to give it more character, both by adding notes outside of the collection and by exploring non-functional tonal harmonic ideas which can be derived from it.
I found the most dramatic section of the poem to be the second half of the first stanza, which I reflected by setting it at the climax of the piece. Although I prefer to keep the order of a text as the author left it, this especially powerful section felt necessary to reiterate when set to music.
Poem:
Somewhere or other there must surely be
The face not seen, the voice not heard,
The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me!
Made answer to my word.
Somewhere or other, may be near or far;
Past land and sea, clean out of sight;
Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star
That tracks her night by night.
Somewhere or other, may be far or near;
With just a wall, a hedge, between;
With just the last leaves of the dying year
Fallen on a turf grown green.