Program Note
My Dear is an offer, more than anything: a promise to find someone in every minuscule wonder of life, no matter how near or far, even as ages end and time marches ever onward. But even then, it is a promise posed as a proposal, with the speaker resigned to accept whatever the answer is, given time for the person to choose if they will come along. The piece escalates this into a whirlwind of possibilities, from the thick chords of the “vastest valleys” to the tumultuous chase from the “ever ends of earth” and across time itself, eventually settling more surely in the suggestion of these hypothetical vows. The music, like the poem, concludes with a feeling of openness, at its end revealing it is an invitation, a quiet vow of gentle certainty, only if the other person should accept.
Poem and program note by Emily Ta.
