Nightingales was another commission by the
Chamber Music Conference and Composers Forum of the East.
Fine continued the theme of expansion by using a vocal
form for an instrumental ensemble of flute, oboe, violin,
two violas, and a double bass. The score, which has no
relationship to her earlier Sounds of the
Nightingale (1971), is inscribed with the following:
“What bird so sings yet so does wail? / O tis the
ravish’d nightingale” by John Lyly, a poet
whose work she had used about forty years prior in
Four Elizabethan Songs. Instead of words, this
motet has five nightingale-like melodies, with the flute
presenting melody one, the oboe having melody two three
beats later, the violin sounding melody three during a
repetition of the oboe’s melody, the viola
beginning melody four at the end of the violin’s
melody three, and the double bass introducing melody five
later. The ensemble is instructed to “Sing like a
nightingale,” and each melody is so distinctive
that it could represent a line of poetry.
–Heidi Von Gunden,
The Music of Vivian Fine, Scarecrow Press,
1999