While serving as a combat intelligence officer in the U.S. Army Air Force, I flew over Nagasaki on August 10, 1945, just 24 hours after the bomb was dropped. On August 8, 1981, some 36 years later, almost to the day, Now and Then was completed in its first version for voice and piano. Although each of the songs was conceived in a day, the years that intervened between their completion and Nagasaki seemed to have been necessary before they could be set down.

The texts which I finally settled on cover a range of poetic images dealing with the death of friends, the innocence and vulnerability of daffodils, the loneliness of one’s final moment, and Chekhov’s prophetic vision of an earth which for thousands of years… has borne no living creature.

The present version of Now and Then for soprano, flute, harp and viola received its first performance in Chicago on January 22, 1982, with Elsa Charlston, soprano and the Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players, Ralph Shapey, conductor. It was commissioned by the Department of Music of the University of Chicago and dedicated to Paul Fromm in celebration of his seventy-fifth birthday. The dedication is uniquely appropriate for a man who has given life-long support to the creation and performance of new American music.
—Earl Kim

on the meadow
thither
roundelay
thither
among the deepening shades