Orchestration
3(afl,pic).2(EH).2+bcl.2 – 4.3.1+btbn.1 – timp.2perc – hp.pno – strs
Duration
9 minutes
Program Note
Hyacinth, too, Apollo would have placed
In heaven had the drear Fates given time
To place him there. Yet in the form vouchsafed
He is immortal. Year by year, when spring
Drives winter flying and the Ram succeeds
The watery Fish, he rises from the earth
And in the greensward brings his bloom to birth.
(Ovid [trans. Melville], Metamorphoses, X.163-69)
The flower that Apollo is said to have transmuted the dying Hyacinthus into was of course not what we know as the hyacinth, but rather the larkspur; something that was always at the back of my mind while working on this piece.
While not a piece of program music per se, this piece explores ideas of grief and memory, before building to a great climax at the end—perhaps representative of Hyacinthus’ inevitable blooming year after year, a testament to the doomed yet eternal love shared between the beautiful prince and the sun god.
Tristan Wilson 