William Bolcom - The Serpent's Kiss (Melissa Coppola, piano)

The Serpent’s Kiss (1969) This exciting piece is the third movement of a four-movement suite, The Garden of Eden, with each movement having some reference to the famed story in the Old Testament. The mood in “The Serpent’s Kiss” moves from demonic to carefree to frantic, and includes unusual instructions for performance including stomping, slapping, clicking the tongue and whistling. One might conjure the image of a snake doing whatever it can to make Eve take a bite of the apple - and of an angry God’s stomping feet, banishing the sinners out of paradise. About the Composer: National Medal of Arts, Pulitzer Prize, and Grammy Award-winner William Bolcom (born May 26, 1938) is an American composer of chamber, operatic, vocal, choral, cabaret, ragtime, and symphonic music. He joined the faculty of the University of Michigan's School of Music in 1973, was named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Composition in 1994, and retired in 2008 after 35 years. Bolcom won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1988 for 12 New Etudes for Piano, and his setting of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience on the Naxos label won four Grammy Awards in 2005.