Hesperus is Phosphorus

Appearances can be deceiving. To the ancient Greeks, the morning and evening skies were home to two stars, Phosphorus at the beginning of the day and Hesperus at twilight. But the Babylonians knew what it took the Greeks centuries to discover: The morning and evening stars were one and the same -- the planet Venus, viewed through two different lenses, from two different perspectives.

Building a libretto from texts ranging from Adrienne Rich and Richard Feynman to the Magnificat, Lewis Spratlan offers a re-examination of our settled views and the discovery entailed in rethinking them from a wider perspective in Vespers Cantata: Hesperus Is Phosphorus. This hour-long, nine-movement work for mixed chorus and chamber ensemble is here performed by Philadelphia’s The Crossing (conducted by Donald Nally) and Network for New Music.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns called Hesperus Is Phosphorus “a compositional tour de force, absorbing at every turn and, indeed, the sort of work that could only come from a senior composer with great craftsmanship and complete creative fearlessness.”

“We live in a world in which perception changes quickly as our knowledge base grows exponentially,” write Spratlan and Nally in the liner notes. “It is easy to be confused or lost, drowning in an ever-growing sea of seeming paradoxes.” Without forcing reconciliation, the composer and performers here guide the listener through these paradoxes, arriving at the conclusion richer for the journey.

Lewis Spratlan, a professor at Amherst College for over 30 years, is a recipient of Guggenheim, NEA and Rockefeller fellowships and received the Pulitzer Prize in Music in 2000 for his opera Life Is A Dream.