Programme Note
Composer Note:
Celestial Night is a piece about duality (yin and yang; heaven and earth). Writing it for me was the result of a growing acceptance of duality and impermanence as a basic fundamental of life. And yet this duality, if we are to understand it correctly, springs from the same source, just as both movements in the work are derived from the very same material. There is nothing "new" in all of this to be sure - it is an archetype remembered by some with frequent recurrences in art.
Inspiration for the piece came from stargazing late at night on several evenings in New Hampshire during the summer of 1996. The piece tends to have a heavenward motion behind it and seems to be reaching away from the earth.
Work on Celestial Night was begun in early December 1996 at Yaddo Artists Colony in Saratoga Springs, and was completed in New York City on April 25, 1997.
-- Richard Danielpour