Composition

Romance and Metamorphosis are two instrumental movements, the second and the seventh, respectively, taken from Songs to the Fair Youth: 6 Songs on Fluidity. It is part of the composer’s project to set the complete Shakespeare sonnets into song cycles.

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Romance is composed in the tradition of similarly titled works by Robert Schumann, characterised by passionate urgency that gives way to tender, lyrical passages. The slight rhythmic ambiguity in the motif in the metrically regular outer sections is developed further in the central section with more metric asymmetry, but despite these shifts, the entire piece is unified by a single melodic motif, explored from multiple angles. Metamorphosis traces a journey of self-discovery and transformation. The saxophone line undergoes a series of evolving iterations of the same motif—its initially fragmented pitches gradually coalesce through octave displacement. This musical evolution gains confidence and rhythmic coherence through a process marked by confusion and emotional struggle, mirroring a metamorphosis that deeply resonates with the queer experience.