Update Title: 7F3A640D-AFE4-4BE1-A1B0-0FFB1F05BC90

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Nightpiece was prompted by my reaction to the haunting moonlit landscapes of the 19th-century American painter Ralph Blakelock.  After reading everything about the artist I could obtain, I began to understand the melancholy, vaguely disturbing quality of his work.  Poverty-stricken and unrecognized, the eventually succumbed to the stress of failure and the responsibility for supporting a large family on his meager income.  He lived his last few years in a mental institution, totally unaware that his paintings were by then commanding high prices.

My music attempts to convey the unspoken mysteries of his paintings as well as the underlying pathos of his life.  I had never attempted to write anything this intentionally subjective.  Since all of my music is based on melody, I found that the process of composing a rather romantic piece came more naturally to me than I had anticipated.  I have used the colors of the orchestra as well as I know how, but I feel that the music is not only coloristic. It is essentially a slow symphonic movement, rather rigorous in its treatment of themes and its attention to structural considerations.  Fragments of all the thematic ideas, for example, are found in the first few bars of the work, and nearly all that ensues can trace its origins back to the beginning.   --Robert O. Johnson

Typical of Johnson's sense of color is the very opening, where a harp quietly tints the muted violins as they begin a slow, nine-note melody (the first and last notes are the same).  This quiet beginning comes, according to the composer, as if from a distance.  Night sounds in the winds, which are in fact an elaborated version of the opening violin melody, lead to a restatement of that tune, once again slowly in the strings--a rather desolate effect.  After more night sounds, brass (over low strings playing a pizzicato version of the opening) intone a sustained melody that is actually an inversion of the original violin line.  More night sounds--in the woodwinds, string and muted brass--lead to a brief climax, after which oboe and clarinet solos lead to a beautiful English horn melody, creating a tranquil feeling.  Darkness returns, and the music builds slowly toward a second climax.  Melodic fragments from earlier return to end the piece in the same mysterious mood with which it began. --Jonathan D. Kramer, program annotator of the Cincinnati Symphony

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