April 19, 2026
New Hampshire and Massachussetts

Rural Hours - World Premiere

A world premiere of a new work for tenor and string quartet by Gregory W. Brown, performed with the Apple Hill String Quartet.

Rural Hours sets texts of Susan Fenimore Cooper, an early nineteenth-century American writer and naturalist. Her work Rural Hours, which captured the intricacies of natural life in rural New York State, was well-known to, and influenced the ideas of, writers like Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and Charles Darwin. Her writing is also considered one of the earliest examples of advocacy for the preservation of American forests.

“Friday, September 1st. — Glorious night. The moon rose early in the evening, with unusual splendor, ascending into a cloudless sky, with a brilliancy and power in her light quite remarkable. The frogs were singing in full chorus, and the insect world was wide awake, humming in every field. It seemed really a shame to close one's eyes upon such a night. Indeed, there was nothing this evening of the calm, still , dreamy character of common moonlight, but rather an animating, exciting power in the fullness of light, which seemed to rival the influence of the busy day.”