counter)induction

Day’s Counterlight is a setting of five poetic fragments written by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843), three of which are being performed this evening. Hölderlin wrote these fragments sometime between 1802 and 1806, the year in which he went mad. By their very nature the fragments eschew any formal regularities, and, against my instinctual impulse towards formal clarity and closure, I tried to let this quality guide my settings. In fact it is unclear exactly how Hölderlin intended these texts to be read – if they were intended for any audience at all. I was drawn to this fundamental ambiguity as well as to their many eccentric beauties and contemporary resonances.