• Nico Muhly
  • The Sweets of Evening (2006)

  • St. Rose Music Publishing (World)

Commissioned by Brooklyn Youth Chorus.

  • piano
  • children's chorus
  • 7 min
  • Christopher Smart
  • English

Programme Note

The Sweets of Evening (2006) was written for Dianne Berkun and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. Having worked with this group of musicians many times before, I was honored to finally write them a piece. Having sung in a boy choir myself, I am fascinated and intimate with the changing nature of young voices, and I looked for a text that is itself transitory – here, depicting the movement between dusk and night. I have long been a great fan of Christopher Smart’s poetry, and particularly of Benjamin Britten’s setting of fragments from Jubilate Agno; my own setting here nods to Britten in its episodic nature and, I hope, generosity towards the singers. The Sweets of Evening lasts six and one half minutes.