Matthew Lam．Composer

Video Production Curator: Mui Hoi Ying Carol

Video Producer and Videographer: Kessay Chan

Poet: Walt Whitman

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Duration: 18’ 

​Commissioned by Cantus12

World Premiere:

25 JUL 2021. Cantus 12: An Interdisciplinary Arts Showcase, Blackbox, Tai Po Arts Centre, Hong Kong.

Performed by Cantus12.

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Program notes:

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d is a pastoral elegy written by the American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892). In this piece, I have set strophes 1 - 9 of the poem into music. I have an affinity to compose pieces related to loss and death, and this piece is no exception. With the elegiac poem, what had come to my mind when I was composing this piece was the melancholies, grief, and the powerlessness towards the feeling of loss, and I definitely would like to depict it in the media of music. 

 

Within the melancholic melodies, I have tried to connect the entire piece with a unique language of harmony - one lies between tonal and atonal; conventional and unconventional. Some words, such as coffin and death, are paired and highlighted with specific harmonies. On the other hand, as a realisation of the emotions in the poem, contrasts are made between harmonies of different sections in the degree of consonance and dissonance. For instance, the soft, elegant, and consonant passages depicting the beauty of the nature in strophe 5 hugely contrasts the powerful, solemn, and dissonant strophe 6.