The Mona Lisa - Winikoff, Michael

📄

Preview not generated yet

"Leanne wrote: “I keep coming back to this poem. The Mona Lisa has always fascinated me, and there is something incredibly sad about the picture for me. I also find her bone structure interesting, and in this work focused on the fact that not only is the famous smile that was painted now long gone, so too are the fingers that painted her.” In setting Leanne’s poem I have tried to create a dream-like texture (“acid colours of a dream” and “smoky hues of black, tan and green”). In places the texture vanishes to capture the solitude and loneliness (“such a small smile, so far away”). The section about the visitors (smoking, with flashing lightbulbs, and screaming babies) is set (somewhat ironically) in a happy relaxed style, but, significantly, without any passion or real emotion: it is simply a somewhat pretty tune. The piece ends with a sad fade on the final word: “dust”, emphasised with a sibilant “s”. In composing this piece I’ve tried to write simply, and to make the piece more readily performable than some of my other works. Although the choir does divide into multiple parts, the piece is almost entirely in 3/4, is rhythmically simple, and does not use any sharps or flats."

◈ Genre → Partsongs

♯ Key D minor

⁄ Time Signature 4/4

♬ Voicing → SATTBB

◆ Difficulty

Elementary

↕ Range A2 – G5

¶ Language → English

Measures 101

Texture Homophonic

Parts 14

Instruments A cappella

Pages 8

CPDL # 32869

Editor Michael Winikoff

Posted 2014-09-06

License Personal

♫Pitch Ranges

MusicXML Part

D3 – D3

Soprano

D4 – G5

Alto

C4 – C5

Tenor 1

D3 – G4

Tenor 2

D3 – F4

T2 B1

F4 – F5

Tenor

D3 – D4

Bass 1

A2 – A3

Bass 2

A2 – G3

Bass

A2 – E3

¶Lyrics / Text

She is there in smoky hues of black, tan and green with some white between the edges of the frame and the listing catch-plate, bearing her name Visitors. Admirers. they look: oh yes….mmm…beautiful…exquisite… a fine piece of artwork he really knew what he was doing. I must buy a print at once - where's the souvenir shop? they don't see: her hidden heart a wooden plank that's all - not even canvas. Rotting all the while. While the visitors smoked and the lightbulbs flashed and the babies screamed and threw rattles on the carpeted floors before they slung her in a perspex cage and hung a crimson barrier on golden stands and glued the 'No Smoking' signs to the walls in four major languages. And esperanto. Such a small smile: her eyes, so far away. The background semi-formed in the acid colours of a dream fading into a memory of long dead fingers twisting the bristles of a brush and catching a smile then bones, now dust.