Acrostic Song

Pulitzer prize-winning composer David Del Tredici's Final Alice is the fifth of six large works for soprano and orchestra based on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland books. It was commissioned in honor of the United States bicentennial and was premiered by soprano Barbara Hendricks and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Sir Georg Solti in 1976.

"Acrostic Song" is the lullaby-like concluding aria from Final Alice. The text is the seven-verse epilogue poem to Through the Looking Glass, the second of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. The poem is an acrostic; the initial letters of the lines spell out Alice Pleasance Liddell, the name of the real-life Alice for whom Carroll wrote his stories.

This arrangement for band was prepared by Mark Spede at the request of the composer. It was designed to be playable by a large variety of groups; there are multiple doublings throughout, and should work well with small or large groups.