For the text of this little song I have excerpted only a very few lines from Edgar Allen Poe's poem. Admittedly the sense is thereby considerably altered (Poe's poem is somewhat lugubrious in its total effect), but I do feel that there is such a thing as "composer's license". Besides, I was specifically asked for a short song!

The sparse, tenuous textures and extremely soft dynamic of The Sleeper will project a kind of "minimalissimo" character. I have used a range of timbral devices in the piano part to suggest that transcendental feeling which Poe's eerie images of nature invoke -- rustling glissandos on the strings of the instrument, delicate muted effects, and bell-like harmonics (which ring in the midnight hour in the first bars of the song).

The vocal part, which is quite simple in style and based entirely on a few tiny melodic cells, requires great sensitivity to nuances of pitch and timbre. I have endeavored to compress an intense and even expansive expressivity into a very small frame, which is, I suppose, what writing a little song is all about.