Program Note

Movements:
I. with shifting change
II. to be so tickled
III. my tongue-tied muse
IV. so far from variation
V. confounded to decay

Sonnets is a collection of miniatures for cello and piano. To me, these micro-pieces are sonnets not in the rigorously formalized Elizabethan or Petrarchan senses of the word. Rather, they grow from the term’s older, freer roots in the Italian word sonetto, meaning “little song” or “little sound.” Each of my five little songs takes as its title and point of inspiration a fragment from a Shakespeare sonnet.

– Andrew Norman