Karim Al-Zand: Music: You Letter Pleased Me Greatly

Your Letter Pleased Me Greatly

variations for soprano & piano

Your Letter Pleased Me Greatly is based on text by Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536), from the Dutch theologian’s book on rhetoric, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style (1512). In a virtuosic demonstration of prose embellishment, he famously provides 195 variations of the simple sentence “Tuae litterae me magnopere delectarunt” [Your letter pleased me greatly]—each variation bringing a very different sense and sentiment to the same basic point. Twenty variants are used in this piece for soprano and piano, and the work’s approach reflects the same conceit: each short “variation” uses similar musical material, but projected with a succession of different moods, characters, and forms.