ABSTRACT
Robert Morris’s Cold Mountain Songs is perhaps the most expansive 12-tone song cycle in the literature. At approximately 45 minutes in length, the composition evocatively sets the poetry of Han-Shan, a ninth-century hermit. This chapter provides several ways into the complicated work by addressing its large-scale form and the composer’s idiosyncratic use of 12-tone techniques; exploring some characteristic properties of its source row; and sampling a few highly expressive passages. The approach offers something for performers, scholars, and analysts alike.
