As Long As Forever Is

a five-movement song cycle for mezzo-soprano, tenor, two alto recorders, crumhorn, viola da gamba, and handbells (2003), 17’

The poems of Dylan Thomas are simultaneous very old fashioned and very highly structured in a new way, so they demanded a musical setting which was simultaneous old fashioned and completely unfamiliar. So each movement of the music I wrote is fashioned on a different medieval mode, but each is cast within a long irregular metrical cycle. Urban legend has it that on the night of November 4, 1953, exactly 50 years before I completed this music, Dylan Thomas walked into the White Horse Tavern in New York’s Greenwich Village at around 2 A.M. Depending on whose account, he either ordered 17, 18, or 19 Irish whiskeys, claiming it to be the record. It was his final public appearance. The 1880 Saloon, which still stands, has a room dedicated to his memory where I sometimes drink a few Irish whiskeys in his honor (never double digits!).