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, d