Discography

The brief song cycle At Dieppe, completed in 1959, is Becker’s last important composition. Becker selected texts by the English symbolist poet and critic Arthur Symons (1865-1945), choosing four of the six poems entitled At Dieppe from the Silhouettes of 1892. Opting to recapitulate its opening stanza with its less despairing message, Becker omitted the last stanza of Symon’s poem ‘On the Beach’ for his setting. The young poet’s elegiac reflections on the sea at sunset seem to find ideal expression in the resigned mood of the composer’s late music; At Dieppe is one of Becker’s most direct and simply designed works.

Dana Paul Perna