Nico
Muhly,

Three Songs for Tenor and Violin should technically be called Three Songs for Tenor, Violin, and Drones, as there is a two-note drone that sounds throughout the piece’s 15-minute duration. In the first part of the songs, the tenor and the violin exchange lyrical and declamatory statements. The second part is a song without words: a sort of dance for solo violin. The third part has the violin intoning a pair of notes while the tenor sings, in essence, a list. The work was commissioned by violinist Tatiana Berman on French surrealist poems of her choosing, and was premiered at the Constella Festival in Cincinnati in 2012.