• Judith Weir
  • Good Morning, Midnight (2014)

  • Chester Music Ltd (World)

Good Morning, Midnight was commissioned by Wigmore Hall with the support of André Hoffmann, president of the Fondation Hoffmann, a Swiss grant-making foundation. First performance by Sarah Connolly at the Wigmore Hall, London, on 6th June 2015.

Good Morning, Midnight was commissioned by Wigmore Hall with the support of André Hoffmann, president of the Fondation Hoffmann, a Swiss grant-making foundation.

  • Mz[=Bar] + 0.0.1+bcl.0/vn.va.vc
  • Mezzo-soprano or Baritone
  • 23 min

Programme Note

1. Good Morning, Midnight (Emily Dickinson)
2. Moon (Kathleen Jamie)
3. The Clocks of the Dead (Charles Simic)
4. Alla luna (Giacomo Leopardi)
5. Lightly stepped a yellow star (Emily Dickinson)

Scores

Reviews

Good Morning, Midnight sets five poems by Charles Simic, Kathleen Jamie and others, about clocks, time and, of course, the moon, with a deliciously lyrical light touch; its small chamber orchestra... is enriched with a deep purr of bass clarinet.

Jessica Duchen, Independent
28th February 2022
Weir sets the words with economy, sweet but never saccharine. The title song, to words by Emily Dickinson, grows from a single pitch into spare but glowing harmonies, the singer weaving the melody into the gaps. Glassy violins conjure up the "cool gaze" of the moonlight, in the words of the Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie; then bluntly plucked strings, wooden knocks and whirring bounces of bow on string invoke the clock that, in Charles Simic's central poem, is so unsettling when it stops. The fourth song is a sidestep in that Weir seems to assume another persona, writing a love song to the moon with a vocal line, in Italian, that plays with operatic styles. But for the closing song - Dickinson again - she steps back again into her own voice.
Erica Jeal, The Guardian
9th June 2015
This new piece, a setting of five poems on the subject of night and moon-light, had the beautiful lightness of touch and shy expressiveness that make her best pieces treasurable.

For a piece ostensibly devoted to night, the music was astonishingly radiant ... Night is portrayed as consoling and tender, a tone exactly caught in Weir’s music.

The radiance of Weir’s piece seemed to permeate the entire evening.
Ivan Hewett, The Telegraph
8th June 2015