text by W.H. Auden
Composed 1999. Duration: 6’15”
Instrumentation
SATB Choir
also arranged for TTBB or oboe and strings
Program Notes
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 knowingly weighed against the awareness of the many ways in which the world has stacked the odds against it.