Pale Fire is based on the novel Rabbit, Run by John Updike. The story centers around Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, who leaves his alcoholic wife Janice, their young son Nelson, and their unborn child and finds companionship with a prostitute named Ruth.

Pale Fire is, at least, twice removed from reality—fiction extracted from fiction. It imagines a moment of the story when both women, miles apart, are simultaneously contemplating about their elusive lover.

The title refers to a line in Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens:

the moon's an arrant thief, And her pale fire she snatches from the sun:

The scene not only takes place in the moonlight but is analogous to the moon’s reflection of the sun as Janice and Ruth cast a reflected image of Rabbit. The same parallel can also be drawn between Pale Fire and the book by Vladimir Nabokov of the same name. In Nabokov’s Pale Fire, we are introduced to the poet John Shade indirectly through the skewed perspective of demented scholar Dr. Charles Kinbote.

This piece was conceived and composed for the joint recital of Ms. Corinne Winters and Ms. Theresa Collins on March 13, 2004 at Towson University.

Click here for a PDF version of the title page and program notes
Click here for a PDF version of the score