Singing the Faint Farewell [1996]

I wrote Singing the Faint Farewell in 1996 for a collaborative project between Orkest de Volharding and Slagwerkgroep Den Haag.
The piece includes an ad libitum dance performance consisting of a very slow, highly stylized striptease. The work is based on the three-voice madrigal Cease Sorrows Now by Thomas Weelkes, from 1597. This performance was first presented at the premiere in Paradiso, Amsterdam, in 1996.

Text:

Cease sorrows now,
For you have done the deed,
Lo! care hath now consum’d my carcase quite.
No hope is left,
Nor help can stand instead,
For doleful death doth cut off pleasure quite;
Yet whilst I hear the knolling of the bell,
Before I die, I’ll sing my faint farewell.

The music is based on several fragments from the madrigal: the two bars that suddenly shift into a 6/8 meter, on the words “cut off pleasure quite,” and the ending, on the last two phrases “Yet whilst I hear…”, where the music rises chromatically.