Stephen Albert: Flower Of The Mountain (Soprano/Piano)
In the words of Stephen Ledbetter:'Flower of the Mountain sets...words of Molly Bloom (drawn) from the close of Joyce's Ulysses. Molly is a middle-aged woman, lying awake in bed next to her sleeping husband, Leopold. Her long monologue, a seemingly random melange of ideas in a stream of consciousness, moves back and forth between her boorish lover Boylan and her aging husband. As she begins to drift off to sleep, she recalls the day 16 years earlier when Leopold asked her to marry him.' '...The wonderful directness of (his) setting eliminates any need for extensive analysis, except to note that the work grows in intensity, archlike, as the fragmentary images circling Molly's somnolent mind build to a climax of energy and activity, returning at the end to the gentle lulling of the opening -- Molly's final, quiet thoughts as she drops off to sleep.' This is the Vocal score for the singer's ease of practice.
