Enchanted Nights

 

                                          Program Notes

The night has been and remains a handsome, strange, and terrifying attractor to us all. Composers across all nations have been inspired and intrigued by it.  In tonight's concert we will enjoy the thoughtfulness and depth in the night Lieder of Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann.  We shall too linger in the French Mélodie of Fauré and delight in Latin American nocturnal revelries.  The works of contemporary composer Nikan Milani fuses tradition and modernity as he combines the piano with the sounds of the daf --an ancient Iranian percussive instrument.

It is at night when we dream -when our fantasies become real, if only for a time.  Under dark skies the arguments of reason seem weak and our innermost emotions can surge forth.  It is too a private time where we can speak directly to ourselves as we are granted a reprise from the bustle of the day.  Night is the freedom from the public eye and from our inhibitions.  Or course night is the realm of love and passion.  Night is liberation and creation.

Yet at night we become aware of our vulnerabilities and after sundown lurk all sorts of dangers and monsters.  Disgorged from darkness the terrors of our subconscious overpower us in nightmares.  Even if we awake our reassurances weaken.  This can be the hour of despair and hopelessness.  The world outside can become inhospitable -a time when sensible explanations can seem dangerously close to collapse.  Temptation seems stronger; devils and ghosts seem much more plausible at night.  Death mythically prefers to visit after sunset and his attendant moment is darkness.

Yet in our daily lives we unify these opposites with ease and do not find it absurd to reconcile all these contradictory meanings.  We both welcome and fear the night.  We replenish our bodies and spirit in it while we associate its colors with finality and death. Darkness blinds our eyes but at the same time we walk the tranquility and beauty of the night to gain inspiration and insight.  The stars may suggest we are insignificant yet we reach for them and touch other planets with our imagination and science.  We might fear the unseen but our bedtime prayers brings us closer to God.  When we dream we do so alone and unaccompanied yet ultimate intimacy happens most naturally at night.

Music and the spoken word may perhaps be the best means to externalize the many meanings that we give to the night and to both bring forth its forces and resolve its contradictions.  This might be so because the visual arts may perhaps be inherently at a disadvantage.  The night is, by definition, a time where light is absent and our visual senses the weakest.  With our eyes shut or unable to see we must especially rely on our hearing.  What could be best than music's interplay of sound and silence to grasp the essence of the night?