My dad was a nurseryman, and our life at home rotated around the seasonal life of the nursery he owned. We measured time by the arrival of Christmas Trees in the winter, bare-root roses soon thereafter, bedding plants in the spring, pumpkins in the summer… we lived by the ordinary and serenely predictable calendar of what would be ready for market.
While flowers were very much part of my dad’s livelihood, he didn’t consider them so much as decorative, but as a miraculous testament to the creator’s genius in distilling such beauty and perfection into such a small place. Flowers are serious things. Their manifold color, shape, size, and perfume demonstrates that the universe is capable of immense expression in nature, and their poetry is singular above all pretenders.
The music collected here is not about decoration or figurative artifice, rather it explores the metaphor, symbol, affekt, meaning, beauty, and love displayed in the radiant floriverse that attends us on all sides.
Frederick Frahm
Placitas, New Mexico
January 14, 2025
The ‘flower pieces’ were composed between 2020 and 2025. Includes the following titles:
Altar Flowers:
Yellow Rose
Purple Peony
Red Sunflower
Rose Garden (2020)
Daffodils, being the poetry of Christ (2021)
White Chrysanthemum (2021)
Water Lily (2023)
Dandelion (2023)
Flor de Dalia (2025)
Flower in a Valley (2021)
Flowers in the Wood (2020)
The Flowers Fall Away (2022)
Persian Lilac (2025)
Red Gladiola (2025)
