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Shadows provides no-vocal commentary on four haiku texts of rather macabre imagery.  A haiku is a very short, seventeen-syllable form of Japanese verse intended to evoke a wealth of thoughts and emotions.  Because of its brevity, the haiku must depend for its effect on the power of suggestion and a deliberate elusiveness -- the reader must "fill in" the outlines that have been drawn.

The music of Shadows seeks not only to reflect the moods suggested by the poetry, but to amplify the implied meanings present in each haiku...and even to create additional associations.  This is accomplished in part by the allusion to and quotation of passages from well-known vocal works that echo the spirit and content of the haiku selected.  Formally, there is an attempt to parallel the classic structure of the haiku, transferring the special characteristics of the written art to sound.  For example, the numbers five and seven (corresponding to the alternation of five and seven syllables in the haiku) are used as the numerical basis of the work.  Further, motives that serve the musical function of kigo or "season-words" are developed and expanded.  These words or expressions denote the time of year, and their inclusion in the haiku is an almost inviolable rule.  Each movement also exhibits an essentially binary construction, reflecting the "principle of internal comparison" that is so frequently employed in haiku writing.  This technique creates a division of the poem into two or more parts that are to be equated or compared, and it should always be looked for.

The poems from which the piece gains its programmatic impetus and brief descriptions of each movement are provided below.  Since each of the four haiku refers to a different time of the year, the movements that they inspire are arranged accordingly, from spring to winter.

I.  Cool the moonlight:
          shadow of a tombstone,
                shadow of a pine.
                                             Shiki  (1867-1902)
                                              (translated by Harold G. Henderson)

Upon first encountering tis haiku, I thought immediately of the text of "Der Abschied" (the final movement of Gustav Mahler's symphonic son cycle, Das Lied von der Erde)...and in particular, of the passage that reads:

O see, like some tall ship of silver sails
The moon upon her course, through heaven's blue sea.
I feel the stirring of some soft south-wind
Behind the darkling pine-wood.

Herein is described the death of the day, when the sun sets and the world falls asleep.  Midway through my first movement, after disjointed references to other elements in Mahler's song, there appears an altered quote of the music that underscores this text.  Now, however, Mahler's orchestral fabric is reduced to a string quartet, and the lines emerge as if recalled in a distant memory.

II.  A graveyard:  low
           the grave mounds lie, and rank
                 the grasses grow.
                                         Shiki
                                           (translated by Harold G. Henderson)

The movement is an oblique parody of the "Dirge" from Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor Solo, Horn and Strings. Britten's song, based on an anonymous fifteenth-century text, utilizes an ostinato in the voice combined with a fugue for the strings and (ultimately) horn.  In lieu of a single melodic ostinato, my music consists of three simultaneous and overlapping rhythmic ostinati or "taleae".  This texture is punctuated intermittently with brief points of canonic imitation that are independent of the repeated rhythmic structure. The instrumentation of the movement also is a mirror of Britten's work and calls for two horns, low strings and percussion.

III. Grave mound, shake too!
 My wailing voice --
 the autumn wind.
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Review

"The Frankfurt audience gave the piece an even warmer reception than the one it received at its world premiere at Powell Hall in 1990."-- Robert Duffy, St Louis Post DIspatch

"...[with Shadows], the forty-five-year-old American Claude Baker was able to prove himself one of the more original composers of his generation....The enthusiastic Applause seemed to show that most of the audience knew how to appreciate what Baker was trying to convey in his Shadows." -- Hellmut Kotschenreuther, Der Tagesspiegel, Berlin.

"The piece is both extreme and subtle. Dirge-Nocturnes conjures the ghostly side of the night and was grippingly presented with great awareness. In Shadows, Baker makes maximum use of the orchestra's sound: sensual with exquisite timbral combinations, interpreted with clear structures, yet never allowing them to dominate. The woodwinds were beautifully phrased, the strings were marvellouis, the brass determined but measured." -- Ellen Kohla, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
 
"[Shadows] is both frighteningly loud and lyrically melodic, eventful, worth hearing and accepted by the audience as Baker himself, acknowledging the ovations, could ascertain. Both the orchestra and the conductor, Leonard Slatkin, provided a very sensitive, finely shaded interpretation." -- Klaus K. Fller, Frankfurter Rundschau

"Grim, expressive abysses, full of timbre, open up into chords that are rammed into the ground, with string ringing and brass snorting. An impressive sound-show of music, elicited from outside rather than within, softened on one hand by a sweet melody and, on the other, by a beautiful pianist. The applause was warm for the composer..." -- Johannes Schwermer, Klnische Rundschau.

"Like the haiku poetry that serves as its inspiration, the score is concentrated and sparse; the gestures are presented not simultaneously but in succession, and every one of them seems packed with meaning. It is a piece whose lovely sonorities are in perfect harmony with its serious content..." --James Wierzbicki, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"Slatkin honored Baker...by including Shadows: Four Dirge-Nocturnes for Orchestra in his programming [with the New York Philharmonic]. The music proved worthy of the honor....Baker successfully combines Asian and European styles. The large orchestra (with a huge percussion section) is used primarily to create sonic effects: sudden claps fading into a resonant glow, hints of driving energy lasting just a bit longer than expected before dying away, the clack of wind chimes, both bamboo and glass. Timber and sonority are used as structural devices, brightness blossoming out or fading dully...Shadows is a piece I'd be interested in hearing again." --Peter Goodman, New York Newsday

"The seventeen-minute work is imaginative in its use of color...and is appropriately evocative, using sharp outbursts and shivers of sound to suggest desolation, isolation and mourning. Here and there, echoes of the musica past have a poignant tinge, seeming pulled like taffy from memory." -- Edward Rothstein, The New York Times

"...Baker, in his Four Dirge-Nocturnes for Orchestra, comments non-verbally on four Japanese haiku texts, creating a rich arsenal of moods. In his light and shadowy nocturnes, he takes you along secretive paths and confronts you continuously with haunting and macabre images." --Hans Heg, De Volkskrant, Amsterdam

"Also welcome was a 1990 work, American composer Claude Baker's Shadows...Inspired by Japanese haiku and music by Mahler, Britten and Stravinsky, Baker has written an appealing collection that conveys thoughts of death in subtle, vivid instrumental detail. The use of percussion is kaleidoscopic. Baker's ability to convey mood is striking. The Pittsburghers gave the work a tran

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