Donald Martino: Notturno

Notturno was composed in 1973 on commission from the Naumburg Foundation for Speculum Musicae. It received its premiere performance by that ensemble on May 15, 1973 at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York, and the following year received the Pulitzer Prize for Music.

Notturno is cast in nineteen parts plus a codetta, whose sequence of reminiscences of things past emerges from the ever-sounding but ever-instrumentally mutating ‘tonic’ note D. The parts group themselves into three larger sections, which one may regard as movements - although my conception was of an uninterrupted continuity. At one level, Notturno is drama. . .a drama played out by the personas of the self as portrayed by the performers of the ensemble.

The first and last movements each contain nine parts contrasting most noticeably in tempo, gesture, and range, but in other aspects as well. Here, ideas are presented in highly mercurial fashion, as if, metaphorically speaking, the self is nervously sorting through its life experiences during that dream-like state which often overcomes us at day’s end. The central movement, on the other hand, slowly and gradually unveils a series of long melodious lines. It is a time for pause, for reflection, for supposition -- and suddenly, without warning, for a revelation (in the form of musical climax) which will initiate new understanding. [. . .]

As I was composing it, Notturno seemed to me to evoke not so much the external sounds, but rather the feelings one might experience in the dark hours; and from this perception, rather late in the creative process, it got its name. One listener has described it as ‘Nocturnal Theater of the Soul.’ I am very pleased with that poetic description.”
- Donald Martino