The Score | Manuscript to Symphony

A living composer and a mysterious manuscript are at the center of a commission by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. For the two-season Lash/Voynich project, NHSO Composer-In-Residence Hannah Lash is writing a symphony inspired by the Voynich Manuscript—a document in an unknown script that is thought to be from fifteenth-century Italy—housed at Yale University’s Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The orchestra has premiered the first three of the work’s four movements individually beginning in 2015-16, with the world premiere of the complete work scheduled for May 4. The orchestra’s opening-night program this September featured the premiere of the third movement, “Biological,” which is inspired by the manuscript’s diagrams of plants and people. The city of New Haven proclaimed September 29 “Women Making Music Day” in honor of Lash and composer Helen Hagan, the first African-American woman to graduate from the Yale School of Music; the NHSO premiered Hagan’s Concerto for Piano and Orchestra circa 1912. Lash is Yale University’s first woman composition faculty member.