‘Gorgeous Nothings’ (2019), a song cycle for soprano, clarinet, viola, cello, and piano, is a work setting and inspired by Emily Dickinson’s envelope manuscripts. These are scraps of poetry, the kind of ‘small fabric’ Dickinson writes in the corner of one such envelope — set in the first song of this cycle: 

“Excuse | Emily and | her Atoms | The North | Star is | of small | fabric but it | implies | much | presides | yet.” 

As such, the envelope texts set in this cycle are fragments, not in the sense that they are torn from an absent whole, but as miniatures: brief, enigmatic movements creating the ‘small fabric’ that amounts to the cycle. Points of musical contact between individual songs create meaning through recollection, and allow the cycle to move between states of unity and separation just as the voice and ensemble do. As such, memory plays an important role, as traditional linear relationships take a backseat. The final song, ‘Look back on Time’, is then a culmination of the entire cycle — rotating back through every song in reverse order using scraps of ‘small fabric’ from each one.

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This recording is taken from the piece's premiere in 2020 at Murray Edwards College Cambridge as part of the Purcell 360 concert series. The soprano was Susannah Hill.


© 2021 Lara Weaver

GORGEOUS NOTHINGS - song cycle

Lara Weaver