Coming up on Modern Notebook this week, Tyler Kline shares two hours of music inspired by the written word, including a work by Zosha di Castri named after Italian author Italo Calvino’s story The Form of Space. Also a movement from Kate Soper’s Voices from the Killing Jar, called May Kasahara, which examines a character from Haruki Murakami’s Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Featuring performances from Wet Ink Ensemble, International Contemporary Ensemble, pianist Eunmi Ko with the McCormick Percussion Group, bassoonist Rebekah Heller, and more.

Hour 1

• Music by Andrew Norman inspired by a Shakespeare sonnet: Confounded to Decay.
• Zosha di Castri‘s La forma dello spazio.
• …and also a fountain, music for bassoon, percussion, and speaking voice (all performed by one person) by Marcos Balter, with text by Gertrude Stein.
• Baljinder Sekhon‘s Death is an Advisor, which takes its name from a chapter in Carlos Castenada’s book Journey to Ixtlan.
• May Kasahara, the prelude to Kate Soper‘s Voices from the Killing Jar.

Hour 2

• The Last Question, solo cello music by Nicholas Britell, titled after the Isaac Asimov short story of the same name.
• Eliza Brown‘s On-dit, for soprano and harp, which sets text by Voltaire.
• The Diamond by Vijay Iyer, based on the Buddhist Diamond Sutra.
• Music by Mary Kouyoumdjian performed by pianist Nicholas Phillips.
• Christopher Rouse‘s Prospero’s Room, which could have been an overture to an unwritten opera based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.