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        • Nico Muhly

        • Syllables (2007)

        • St. Rose Music Publishing (World)

        Commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus

        • synth, pf
        • Upper voices
        • 7 min

        Programme Note

        Syllables is an exploded setting of an old Icelandic text describing the end of the world. I say exploded as I elected to set the text both in English, fragments of Old Icelandic, as well as nonsense syllables taken from both languages. There is a constant, anxious pulse throughout the first section, which ends with a giant unison and the entire choir singing the same text for the first time in the piece. This texture melts into an aquatic, lilting piano accompaniment, over which a long, long line eventually dissolves into unison chordal syllables, as if the last things standing are the fragments of language.

        Nico Muhly