Syzygy is the title of David Del Tredici's imposing setting of two James Joyce poems for soprano, solo horn, tubular bells and an orchestra of eight woodwinds, two trumpets and six solo strings, and it is a meaningful title indeed. In astronomy, "syzygy" refers to a nearly straight-line configuration of planets in a gravitational system; more broadly, it can refer to any yoked pair moving symmetrically around a center. Del Tredici, still in the serialist phase of his career but now having definitely escaped the shadow of Webern and become his own man, created in "Syzygy" a work devoted entirely to this sort of movement: rhythmic, harmonic, and (thanks to an assiduous choice of poems) verbal. The setting of the first poem, "Ecce Puer," lays out the basic musical patterns of the work. A piccolo playing at the peak of its range and a double-bassoon playing its lowest notes begin the work, and the instrumental ensemble enters in opposing pairs before the soprano sings a note. Self-echoes and symmetries abound throughout this setting; for example, in the second quatrain of the poem, the violins mirror each other and the piccolo mirrors the soprano, while the other strings play phrases in heterophony. Similarly, the instrumental interlude between quatrains 3 and 4 is a mirror image of the setting of the third quatrain, and the postlude is an almost exact reverse of the prelude. "Nightpiece," the second poem, grabs these patterns and explodes them into a truly large-scale setting of a haunting poem. Here, the reversals, mirrors, heterophonies and repetitions with augmentation and diminution seem inescapable, building on each other and tightening the screws of tension throughout the setting. Even the soprano joins in, as she ricochets between high and low voices to sing the words "faint illume." Finally, after an extravagant working-out of these ideas, the setting climaxes on the word "tolls" with a thundering unison heterophony of staggered phrases, after which the last three lines of the poem are set in a subdued manner. Then, unexpectedly, Del Tredici throws in a cadenza for the soprano and solo horn on the first three lines of each stanza, which soon reduces itself to a cadenza on the words "tolls," "till," and "wave." Finally, the instruments take over and end the work by resolving the various symmetries. Throughout these two settings, Del Tredici places enormous demands on the soprano, as is his custom; besides the difficulty of quickly switching registers in phrases like "faint illume," the highest high notes, incredible sustaining power, and quicksilver runs are all required. Syzygy takes its titular conceit and runs with it. The work is enormously complex, yet its processes work themselves out in a way that will have an immediate, visceral effect on most listeners, especially when the poems' meanings move symmetrically as well. Syzygy is a stunning work.

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