A Note From the Composer
I made many good friends at Hardin-Simmons University, and one of those friends was a vocal performance major named Bryson Rule. Towards the beginning of 2020, he officially commissioned a song cycle for solo tenor voice using texts from some of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry. He gave me multiple options of poems he liked in particular, and I eventually settled on The Bells, Alone, and Hymn. Since we were still students at the time of the commission, I didn’t rush the process of working on the cycle. The Bells began the writing process in early 2020, and the cycle wasn’t finished until completing Alone in 2022. I decided upon the order of each movement with a natural progression in mind, that is, going from fearful and maniacal, to lonely and frustrated, to finally receiving hope in the final movement. Because of the recurring text and themes “of good and ill,” we decided that it would be a fitting name to the cycle. Since this was my first song cycle, it was very fun to weave different themes and other small easter eggs across each movement, as well as finding fun ways to paint the text! Can you spot them all?
