text by W.H. Auden
Composed 1999. Duration: 6’15”
First Performance: 10 February 2000. Alfred Newman Hall, Los Angeles. Choir conducted by Chris Myers.
Instrumentation
Choir (SSAATTBB)
also arranged for oboe and strings
Program Note
Lullaby was composed in reaction to the murder of Matthew Shepard in October 1998.
Auden’s text, composed in 1937, is a bittersweet poem in which the ecstatic joy of newfound love is weighed against the many ways the world has stacked the odds against it.