il mio bimbo....... tocca di luna...... – for reed quintet - Julian Grant

Composer: Julian Grant

Instrumentation: for reed quintet (oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, bassoon)

Duration: Approx. 9 minutes

Date Written: 2020

Additional information:  

This piece is based on a tiny fragment of a lullaby, that appears in Puccini’s 1910 opera La fanciulla del West, sung by a Native American squaw. Musicologists do not seem to be able to agree on the fragment’s provenance, or if it is an original invention to Puccini, though it is possible that it is derived from a laughing song in Alice Fletcher’s Indian Story and Song from North America, a copy of which is found in Puccini’s library in Torre del Lago. The title of my work quotes from the sung text of the lullaby (the libretto of the opera, by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini, is based on a play by David Belasco) which translates as ‘my baby….touches the moon’.

The work starts with the tiny four pitch fragment in Puccini’s whole-tone harmonization, and very quickly drifts away from that. In using, developing and playing with this little musical unit, a narrative, inspired by the evocative words from the libretto, crystallized and drove the piece forward. The cosy baby dreams and aspires to touch the moon, but encounters obstacles flying through the night sky - sudden gusts of wind, maybe some hostile night birds and then, perhaps, an intervention by a benign moon-goddess, so that maybe, in the infant’s dream, he finally does have a chance of touching the moon.

© Julian Grant 2020