JOHN LIBERATORE
composer

The Soughing Wind takes its title from William Carlos Williams’s poem of the same name.  The poem in its entirety reads:

 

Some leaves hang late, some fall

before the first frost—so goes

the tale of winter branches and old bones.

 

As is often the case, the association between this poem and my piece came about late in the compositional process.  The piece was not knowingly inspired by the poem, but the poem “fit” the piece, whatever that means.  The piece is a five-movement arc.  Two nearly identical interludes surround a tumultuous inner movement.  The fifth movement is a hollowed-out shell of the first.  The pure, delicate harmonics that begin the piece have been replaced by a faint whine (produced with a guitar slide).  The wistful, arioso melody of the first movement returns as a ruin of melodic fragments.  And yet I don’t hear the last movement as desolate or mournful.  It simply is.  “So goes” The Soughing Wind.

 
The work was written for and premiered by Duo Damiana (Molly Barth and Dieter Hennings), and later recorded for Albany Records.