Composer Corner: Andrew Imbrie’s Requiem

Movement II: To The Evening Star

Lisa Saffer

The extraordinary American soprano Lisa Saffer was well on her way to international renown when she joined Riverside Symphony for the New York premiere and recording of Imbrie’s requiem. Currently on the faculty of New England Conservatory, Ms. Saffer continues to be in wide demand for both Baroque and Contemporary repertory. A musician’s musician, her finesse, expressive insight and beauty of sound, often to stratospheric coloratura ranges, are as well-suited for Handel Operas as the title role in Berg’s Lulu, which she has sung to international acclaim.

The selection of poetry for the Requiem took Imbrie longer than its actual composition, thereby underscoring the paramount importance of text in vocal music. Viewed from large to small—beginning with a work’s overall architecture to the structure of each movement to the drama and emotion of every moment, text furnishes the musical inspiration that brings a work to life in its creator’s imagination. It is telling that Imbrie sought out poetry when, like others before him, he could have drawn from classic religious text for the entire work; clearly he brought this arduous task upon himself in order to give voice to his own emotions. 

Imbrie characterized the poetic sequence from movement to movement as an “implied dialogue” between traditional and liturgical text, manifestly evident in Blake’s “To the Evening Star.” Dispensing with the choir while focusing solely on the soprano solo, the movement represents a radical departure in texture and mood from the first movement.  Of the poem’s first line, “Thou fair-hair’d angel of the evening”—a metaphor for the evening star—Imbrie explained, “I was reminded of my son, who was fair-haired, who now seems to me angelic, [and also] because of the presence of the ideas of youth and innocence in the poem.”  

Beginning with the opening interlude, Imbrie drapes the poem in luxurious instrumental passages that predict or echo the vocal lines, at times creating a sense of thoughtful repose, at others shaping and urging on the movement’s dramatic arc. Note the setting of “love” (third line) as the soloist’s highest note, as well as the barking, threatening instrumental rustlings of the wolf and lion following the star’s withdrawal (“Dost thou withdraw”). 

Blake—and Imbrie—end in peaceful incantation. Rereading the poem with this exquisite, serenely melancholic music echoing in my head, I was struck by a sense that Imbrie had somehow preserved his son in this imaginary firmament—and perhaps had even drawn solace from it.

“Thou fair-hair’d angel of the evening,
Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light
Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown
Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!
Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the
Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,
Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,
And then the lion glares through the dun forest:
The fleeces of our flocks are cover’d with
Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

-William Blake”