Written for Soprano and Tenor soloists and SATB chours.These two short Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) settings commissioned by Craig Hella Johnson and Conspirare for their September 2007 concert series in Texas were designed to frame an evening’s programme rather like a compositional ‘inhalation’ and ‘exhalation’ a crescendo and decrescendo or a prelude and postlude. Densely textured the music aims to hint at the myriad readings Dickinson’s surface-simple poetry yields in its many readers. Each setting uses a solo soprano and tenor their voices referencing the polarities inherent in each poem (‘sun’ and ‘shade’; ‘love and hate’).