Completed in July, 2022.

Text adapted from Letter Writing: Its Ethics and Etiquette (1890) by Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton (1849-1937). Public domain.

Commissioned by the Staunton Music Festival and dedicated to Carsten Schmidt.

Program note

One of the most fraught decisions when writing emails can be selecting a salutation (Dear Jane? Dearest Jane?) and a valediction (All best? Yours? Sincerely? Regretfully?). We can take consolation in knowing that the etiquette around these choices has always been challenging. Perhaps that’s why Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton wrote his 1890 tome Letter-Writing: Its Ethics and Etiquette, a book that attempts to guide the nervous letter-writer. In my composition Salutation, Valediction, a narrator recites portions of this book’s chapter on letter openings and closings, while the violin duo offers support, snark, sweetness, and silliness in response.