Somnium

for solo cello, 2016, duration: 3 minutes.

 

            “Somnium” was composed in 2016 for cellist, Ovidiu Marinescu.  It is inspired by and based on the Scriabin Prelude, Op. 37, No. 1.  It is a expressive examination of dreamy ideas and hypotheses.

            The title comes from a novel, Somnium (Latin for "The Dream"), written in 1608, in Latin, by Johannes Kepler.  In the narrative, an Icelandic boy and his witch mother learn of an island named Levania (our Moon) from a daemon (demon).  The novel, Somnium, presents a detailed imaginative description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon, and is considered the first serious scientific treatise on lunar astronomy



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T   © Larry Nelson 2019