Last Words - Book 1

The last words of famous people, whether real or invented, exert a strange fascination. Breaking with the tradition that a song cycle is a setting of poetry, Timothy Bowers has chosen the last words of fourteen famous (in one caseinfamous) characters from history and two comic/ironic epitaphs by Byron as his texts. Each collection provides a short (c 7’) concert work with settings ranging from fifteen seconds to five minutes duration.

Book 1 is forSoprano and Piano. Two poets (Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickenson) followed by two martyrs - St Joan of Arc and Anne Boleyn.