A Precipice Garden

Description

Harp, Mixed Chorus, Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello, Double Bass — A PRECIPICE GARDEN for chorus, harp and string quintet is a cantata about our experience of time-- its ephemerality, speed, inevitability, suspension, finality, and eternity.  The twenty-minute work is a setting of five short poems by poet and conductor James DePreist that derives its name from his collection of poems A Precipice Garden. The work was commissioned to mark the twentieth anniversary of The Music Group of Philadelphia and its director Sean Deibler in 1997 and subsequently revised in 2025. Briefly stated, the first movement is a kind of prelude that considers time as a magical, instantaneous succession of moments future/present/past.  The second movement, a kind of scherzo, is concerned with the relentless speed of time, while the third movement, an elegy, considers time's incremental, inexorable progression towards death.  The fourth movement is a fantasia on the eternity of time, while the last, a kind of postlude, views the end of a day as one of the inevitably recurring cycles of our time experience.  The cantata ends with a final allusion to the chiming clock reference heard throughout the piece.  The work is indebted to composer Bernard Rands who first brought DePreist's poetry to my attention. The fourth movement in particular is a humble homage to Rands who has been an inspiration to me over the years.