On Jealousy
2002
Tenor & piano | 12'
First performance: Mark Milhofer (tenor) and Paul Plummer (piano), Magdalen College Auditorium, Oxford, 2002.
Programme note
In 1351, Francesco Petrarca wrote a letter ‘To posterity’, which records his opinion of his life and work. Some years later, in 1359, Petrarch wrote to his friend, Giovanni Boccaccio, to deny any jealousy of Dante Alighieri. This work assembles extracts from these letters, together with passages from Dante’s Convivio, which considers the nature of envy.