Night Piece

Night carries much symbolic weight in the German song tradition: in Schoenberg’s ​Verklärte Nacht it is a liminal time in which societal mores are suspended; in Schubert’s ​Nacht und Träume it is a place to find refuge in dreams. ​Night Piece is inspired by Samuel Beckett’s last television play, ​Nacht ​und Träume (1982). In this wordless play the only sound is that of a voice humming the final bars of Schubert’s lied of the same name, originally sung to the words ‘Holde Träume, kehret wieder!’ (‘​Sweet dreams, come back​!’). Beckett conveys a feeling of deep pathos amid the silence and stillness. In ​Night Piece the final bars of ‘​Nacht ​und Träume’ return and mark the Dreamer’s passage through the various stages of sleep in which different types of dreams occur. Our inchoate desires reveal themselves in these half-forgotten dreams—the desire ​for atonement, for forgiveness, for consolation, for acceptance. This is not a lullaby but a howl of protest to be left alone in dreams, safe from reality, and enveloped in night.