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Programme Note

Composer note;

Elegiac Songs, for mezzo soprano and chamber orchestra on Emily Dickinson texts, was completed in January 1974. It was commissioned by the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard for Jan DiGaetani, who gave its first performance, with Arthur Weisberg conducting. It is dedicated to Jan DiGaetani and Paul Fromm. The composition of the piece fell between the two acts of my Shakespeare-based opera Winter’s Tale.

--John Harbison