Program Notes: Ich und Du simply would not have been possible without the inspiration, assistance, and sheer joy of working with soprano Heidi Moss - a wonderful artist colleague who would soon become Heidi Moss Erickson. These songs are personal to a unique degree, created as a kind of courtship gift and the first work I wrote for her at the start of my composer residency with San Francisco’s LIEDER ALIVE! We picked out the poetry together in a small cabin overlooking the Mendocino coast as the waves from an unusually intense winter storm echoed throughout the night.
It was all very romantic.
In “Dein blaues Auge hält so still” the repeated ‘E’ in the piano holds us still as the fast moving treble motives depict the blazing eyes of the beloved. “Ich und Du” uses two different musical ideas to depict the separateness of the two lovers, only to see them merge and come together (musically and spiritually) at the end of the piece. “Mondnacht” begins with a dialogue of soft chords that bounce between separate registers, personifying the poetic imagery of the Earth and Sky sending amorous intentions to each other.
We come back to these songs often, frequently pairing them alongside settings of the same texts by Schumann and Brahms.