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| | Christopher Rouse - Composer - Envoi (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-19) |
 | | In the five years preceding the composition of Envoi, I lost a number of dear friends Stephen Albert, William Schuman, Andrzej Panufnik, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein, for example and they were memorialized in a variety of scores I composed between 1990 and 1995. |
 | | Obviously, our word "envoy" is related to it, but it also implies concepts ranging from the conclusion of a book or other work of art (or perhaps a life) to the "sending out" of something, much as a space probe is sent out to explore the cosmos. |
 | | In planning Envoi, I recalled that those whose deaths I have witnessed (including my mother) did not struggle but rather, in effect, seemed to slowly recede from life, much as a ship sails ever more far away until it disappears over the horizon. |
| www.christopherrouse.com /envoipress.html (525 words) |
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