Music and Sound
Over a three year period, Michael Comlish experimented with how to convey the fragmentary nature of Darkling in an aural environment, determining which and how much of the text by Anna Rabinowitz would be set to music. He started with the original idea Anna began with for her work. He wondered if The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy, which forms an acrostic throughout the entire poem Darkling, could be set in counterpoint as the poet looking bleakly back at the 19th Century, as Rabinowitz was doing toward the 20th. (Both poems were completed on the first day of the last two Centuries.) Comlish considered many possibilities to suggest fragmentation, including the utilizations of several composers, whose work would literally appear to be randomly connected. He also was interested in ways to make live accoustic singing and music interact with pre-recorded voices and sounds, as well as live spoken voices.
American Opera Projects provided the ideal composer, Lee Hoiby, to re-envision the lieder of Schubert and Schumann. Stefan Weisman, who participated in American Opera Projects' Composers and the Voice program, was chosen as composer. He was inspired to use the structure of the Lee Hoiby setting as his own structural basis to form the music, and ultimately chose to write for the string quartet.
Sections of the piece were tested at American Opera Projects’ First Chance, and the Guggenheim’s Works & Process. Work continued all the way up to the opening, with two of the most popular compositions, “Cold in this Coat” and the final “Dayanu,” completed merely weeks before the show premiered in New York City.
