"Ariadne’s Lament" is a piece for eight sopranos. It is the third and final piece of works for eight women's voices inspired by and loosely based on a madrigal by Monteverdi, "Lamento d’Ariana," using it as a source for pitch and syllables. I have always loved Monteverdi’s close harmonies, the tension in them, and I wanted to extend them. "Ariadne’s Lament" is the culmination of the first two pieces. It uses more obvious phrases from Monteverdi and more contrasting sections and writing techniques.

Ariadne's Lament

MARY JANE LEACH is a composer/performer whose work reveals a fascination with the physicality of sound, its acoustic properties and how they interact with space. In many of her works Leach creates an other-worldly sound environment using difference, combination, and interference tones; these are tones not actually sounded by the performers, but acoustic phenomena arising from Leach’s deft manipulation of intonation and timbral qualities: “an acoustic Through the Looking Glass world based on sound that the performer is not making.” (The New Yorker).

Ariadne's Lament

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