Frederic Glesser - Summer Nights Passing

Summer Nights Passing (2006)

Duration: 11' 30"
Instrumentation: flute, harp (or piano), string orchestra
Alternate Versions: flute, piano
Availability: from the composer
Recordings: no commercial recording (archival recording available for audition)

Program Notes:

While working on Summer Nights Passing I reached my fiftieth year. For most people (those fortunate enough to reach it), this is a milestone occasion of course, among many others. And naturally this event caused me to allow for greater reflection on my life. (What had I been doing all those years, where was I now, and where am I headed ?) For me, this inner reflection caused a healthy chance for nostalgia and sentiment as my thoughts turned back to a much simpler period in my life. For many people I believe, our fondest memories may come from early childhood as we are just beginning to grow. This presumes of course, that one is growing in a stable, secure, and loving environment at home. I was.

In the early to mid 1960's I was 6 to 8 years old. I do remember where I was, and what I was doing, when all the world learned of the assasination of President Kennedy. However, at that young age I was unable to grasp anything beyond the very superficial understanding of that single event. How could I comprehend the political and idealogical positing of Cold War policies that held the world in a vice-grip. How could I understand the meaning and significance of some Wall built in a strange place called Berlin. It would be many years before I understood that the most horrific series of events during the century had ended a little more than a decade before I was born. And how could I ever hope to understand the meaning and significance of names, places, and phrases like Cuban Missile Crisis, nuclear annilhation, Castro, Khrushchev, or Bay of Pigs. Where in the world was Cuba ? And what was Korea ?

What did I care ? I was only a kid, very young, and of much greater importance were the endlessly euphoric possibilities of the hot summer nights growing up in northwest Ohio. They would begin just around dusk, and last until my mother began calling for me to come home after several hours of darkness. After already spending the entire day outside with my friends, playing, running, jumping, wrestling, climbing, and riding bikes, we would continue on still, but now, around dusk, we could roll in the cool grass, and chase after fireflies too. It was chasing the fireflies that I remember most. There was no past then, and the future was not significant .... there was just right now, and hundreds of fireflies to chase.

Only now do I understand how fleetingly and quickly were my very few, short, and cherished Summer Nights Passing, and how I cannot ever return completely to that time in body, mind, or spirit.