Three Songs for Tenor and Violin (2012)

Three Songs was commissioned by the violinist Tatiana Berman, who suggested a text by André Breton and another by Jacques-Bernard Brunius. I normally avoid setting surrealist text — and in fact, often plead with students not to do so — so I felt like this was a challenge worth undertaking. The fundamental conceit is that there is a drone on two notes which lasts the entire piece; this creates a unifying atmosphere and allows for slightly more complicated harmonic language than just voice and violin would allow. The second song is in fact just violin alone; having made that decision, I felt free to use the violin in the first movement almost as a kind of “reader” of the text: it comments on the words, interrupts, re-shades, and interrogates. The second movement without text uses the violin in a more acrobatic way. The third movement, a list, always beginning with “I love,” allowed me to write a little étude on repetition for the voice and violin, maintaining the poetry of the text but without forcing it into pure abstraction.

– NICO MUHLY