Programme Note I am fascinated with the scope of a song cycle, in which an artist can express various stages of an emotional development. In Five Songs, the development is not one of major proportions but one of subtleties, achieved through varying degrees of conflict and reconciliation of the text and music. In the first song, Wondering, the text and music work as one to produce a mood of doubt and questioning through shifting tonalities, varying tempi, and differing levels of activity. In the second song, Trusting, the mood is one of apparent peacefulness and inner security. The text and the soprano line clearly indicate this, but the accompaniment of the other instruments adds a feeling of uneasiness to the overall mood. Only at the end is there a hint of reconciliation. The third song, Renewal, is one of pleading. Being the central song, it represents most clearly the conflict inherent in the work as a whole. It embodies the conflict between the rational awareness of the security within oneself and the actual feeling of this security. Structurally, Renewal is in two distinct parts corresponding to the two stanzas of the text. The first part builds quickly in intensity from a foundation of ever-expanding guitar chords. The second part slowly dissipates this energy as the soprano quietly enunciates the text in the manner of a recitative. In The Wine of Loving, the four soloists are divided into two distinct groups, eacdh with its own metre and style. The soprano and guitar attempt to express the positive statements of the text with a majestic and lyrical line; but they are continually undermined by the meandering fugal passages of the clarinet and viola. There is only a slight reconciliation at the end. The song is in the form of a chorale. The texture of the fifth song, Moonlight, is sparse, even as the text is sparse, being mere snatches of thoughts. The song, being the most intimate, is essentially a solo for guitar, who is joined periodically by the soprano, while the clarinet and viola play a sparse accompaniment. The text of Moonlight does not seem to resolve the conflicts that have been expressed in the work. And yet and emotional development has taken place. If there is to be a reconciliation at the end at all, it must be through that subtle process the Greeks called catharsis, the cleansing of the spirit through the painful acquiring of knowledge.