Instrumentation soprano and string quartet (vn I/II, va, vc)
Vocal Range C4 to Bb5
Timing ca. 23′ in nine connected movements
Composed 2025
Poems by Yusuf Saadi
Commissioned by Wilfrid Laurier University Faculty of Music and funded by special friends of Laurier, in celebration of the Faculty’s 50th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of the Penderecki String Quartet
World Premiere March 15, 2026, Maureen Forrester Recital Hall, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario. Leslie Fagan, soprano; Penderecki String Quartet
Programme Notes
Painting a February Sky
Meditation (Waxing Moon)
Love Sonnet for Light
Meditation (Full Moon)
If Van Gogh Worshipped the Moon
Meditation (Waning Moon)
Reading Borges on the Moon
Meditation (New Moon)
Flowers on Europa
This Exact Shade of Moon for soprano and string quartet is a setting of five poems by Canadian poet Yusuf Saadi, chosen from his debut collection Pluviophile. The moon has long been considered a symbol of emotion, of the waxing and waning of life cycles, of the subconscious, of reflection. Each poem references the moon in some way, and serves as a metaphor for an intimate relationship.
Painting a February Sky seeks to capture the moon with just the right mixture of colour and emotion. Love Sonnet for Light sings of vulnerability, of trying to capture something uncapturable, of light that takes refuge in a moon’s crater. In the dramatic and unsettled If Van Gogh Worshipped the Moon, the painter finds solace in his brother’s letters, as the madness of the full moon approaches. The Argentine tango-inspired Reading Borges on the Moon imagines a future where the Earth has burnt in fire and we have relocated to the moon, our Earth/Moon relationship now reversed. The cycle closes with Flowers on Europa, a world-standing-still moment that looks to the icy moon of Jupiter and beyond into the infinite. As a continuous work, the songs are connected by instrumental meditations on the lunar phases, circling from waxing to full, then waning to new.
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