Program Note

When I began work on this project I wanted to capture images of austerity. I wanted to throw the audience in a world where they could see and feel the incredible things around them. I did not want to tell a story per se but to capture the images of a story at specific points so I could isolate specific emotions. While I was writing the first movement I stumbled across Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” which is an important poem in the English romantic movement in the early 19th century.

The poem tells the tale of a mariner whose ship becomes lost in Antarctic sea ice before it is led to safety by an albatross, who the mariner then shoots for no apparent reason. This action dooms the ship and its crew. The first movement describes the following scene in which the ship becomes stranded near the equator, baking the crew in the sweltering heat. The music gradually becomes more oppressive before it becomes overwhelming. Here, echoes of the albatross haunt the mariner and you can hear its beauty in key moments. In the second movement, after the crew has tied the mariner to the mast for his crimes, the mariner watches in horror as Death boards the ship and claims the lives of the crew after a game of dice with the “Nightmare Life-in-Death”. All except the mariner who is claimed by the Nightmare. In the final movement, the mariner begins to pray and repent and his guilt is partially expiated. As it begins to rain, the crew’s corpses rise and begin to man the ship. After a trance the mariner awakens but is unsure if he is still hallucinating.

The title comes from the line “It was perched for vespers nine” which was how many nights the albatross remained by the ship to guide it out of the Antarctic.

Performances

May 2, 2026 John A. Paulson Center, New York University, Manhattan, NY. Jeremiah Cossa (third movement only).

February 16, 2025 John A. Paulson Center, New York University, Manhattan, NY. Wenyi Xiong (first movement only).