Permit Me Voyage

In the summer of 1973 I was reading the collected work of James Agee for a song cycle to be written for Shirely Verrett. I was struck by the powerful dramatic thrust of his poems and their ethereal beauty. I planned to put several of them together in a work for soprano, chorus and orchestra framing a dramatic work in which the soloist would speak for the personal side of humanity (i.e. love) and the chorus would represent the cosmic outlook (i.e. destiny). When the New Haven Symphony offered me a commission late in 1974 I decided that these would be ideal circumstances in which to create the work. "Permit Me Voyage" was composed in 1975 and is scored for soprano, mixed chorus, 2 flutes (doubling piccolo), 2 oboes (doubling english horn), 2 clarinets (doubling bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, 2 percussion players, harp and strings.