The second half of the program will consist of George Crumb’s moving song cycle Apparition. Finished in 1979, it sets selected texts from Walt Whitman’s elegy for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.” From my first experience with the cycle, I was struck by how much it resonated with my own grieving process. I was introduced to the piece shortly after my father died in 2015 and I first heard it live in March 2022, performed by Abigail Nims and Alexandra Nguyen at a University of Colorado Boulder Faculty Tuesday Concert. After that first live experience, I realized the power of the piece for me lay in how, by listening to the cycle, I reexamined emotions I recognized from my years of processing grief. 

Modern grief theory posits three phases of grief, the moderately active Avoidance Phase, the highly active Confrontation Phase and the low activity Accommodation Phase. As a mourner passes through their grief journey, they are unlikely to pass through an orderly process of phases. Instead, they will likely return to the emotions and processes of previous phases many times. Thomas Attig calls this “relearning the world.” 

Crumb’s evocative writing for the piano and voice require both performers to explore a vast palate of sound colors. From the piano strumming effect of the first and last movement, to the percussive qualities of “Vocalise 2” and “Approach Strong Deliveress,” to the variety of bird-like sounds in all three vocalise movements, there is no end to the nuances and surprising moments in Crumb’s score. Crumb builds a sound world rich in feeling and anchored to nature. The wide range of dynamics and types of sounds allow the score to communicate an extensive emotional breadth; an emotional breadth that can evoke the varied experiences of grief. 

As you listen to Apparition tonight, we invite you to be open to the emotions you feel while listening. Do some movements recall emotions from earlier in the work? Do you notice that some movements feel more emotionally intense than others? When we reach the return of “The Night in Silence under Many a Star,” do you feel the same as when you heard the first movement?

We also invite you to process your experience with this work through a drawing that reflects on loss and remembrance. Before the show and at intermission, paper and pencils will be available for you to pick up. Feel free to draw whatever you want. If you are willing to leave your drawing with us at the end, it will become a part of a larger reflective community artwork. If you would rather just listen, please feel free to do so.