Crane Palimpsest

PROGRAM NOTE

Crane Palimpsest is a love letter to New York, in the form of a meditation on the Brooklyn Bridge. In juxtaposing stanzas from Hart Crane’s “Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge” with my own responses to Crane’s poem, I’ve made “the bridge” literal: two musical vocabularies are in play and cross paths; the first being the more formal language heard in the introduction and first several stanzas of the Crane, the second being the vernacular or pop-based harmonic language in the songs with my own words. As the piece reaches its apex around the line “O Harp and Altar,” it is as if the two languages meet on the bridge and are exchanged: the final song with my own lyrics begins in a dense and dissonant setting before giving way to the final stanzas of the Crane poem, which are set in an unapologetically open harmonic atmosphere.

— Gabriel Kahane, 2012

LISTEN

Listen on Bandcamp

PURCHASE