Tori Amos, a prominent singer-songwriter and pianist who rose to fame in the 1990s, surprised listeners and critics alike in 2011 with her twelfth studio album, Night of Hunters. This album marked a significant departure from her established alternative rock sound, delving into the rich world of classical music. While Amos had occasionally referenced her classical training – including studies at the Peabody Conservatory of Music – Night of Hunters was a full immersion into classical forms and themes. Partnering with the prestigious classical label Deutsche Grammophon and collaborating with the Apollon Musagète string quartet and wind instrumentalists, Amos crafted fourteen songs for this project. Each track on Night of Hunters draws inspiration from a different piece of classical music, forming a cohesive song cycle that bridges the gap between contemporary songwriting and timeless classical compositions.
As a long-time listener of Tori Amos since her Little Earthquakes era, the shift to Night of Hunters was initially unexpected. Like many who grew up with her 90s albums, I was captivated by her lyrical depth and piano virtuosity. However, life and academic pursuits led me away from closely following her later work, and Night of Hunters slipped under my radar upon its release. It was during the quieter days of the 2020 pandemic that I rediscovered Amos’s music, including this unique album. Night of Hunters not only reconnected me with Tori Amos’s artistry but also offered a fresh perspective on Classical Music Songs through her contemporary lens.
Tori Amos, the acclaimed singer-songwriter and pianist, performing classical music songs from her album 'Night of Hunters' at a live concert.
The concept for Night of Hunters took shape through Amos’s collaboration with Alexander Buhr, then Executive Producer at Deutsche Grammophon. In a documentary accompanying the album, Amos recounts asking Buhr to suggest classical pieces that had deeply “inspired him.” From Buhr’s recommendations, Amos selected pieces that resonated with her and offered fertile ground for reinterpretation, drawing on the classical tradition of variations on a theme. Her choices spanned centuries of music history, including works by composers such as Charles-Valentin Alkan, Enrique Granados, Erik Satie, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Schubert, Felix Mendelssohn, Robert Schumann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Modest Mussorgsky, Domenico Scarlatti, Claude Debussy, and even Gregorian Chant. Through Night of Hunters, Amos engages in a dialogue with a predominantly male classical music canon, offering a contemporary, female viewpoint on these historical classical music songs. The album’s bookend tracks, both variations on solo piano preludes, powerfully illustrate this approach. “Shattering Sea,” the opening song, is inspired by “Song of the madwoman on the seashore” from Alkan’s Préludes, Op. 31, while the closing piece, “Carry,” reimagines “The girl with the flaxen hair” from Debussy’s Préludes, Book I.
Amos describes Night of Hunters as beginning at dusk with the “shattering” of a relationship, plunging the listener into a moment of crisis without exposition:
I liked the idea of starting with the crisis, with no backstory, not telling anybody anything at first because we’ve all been through something, whether it’s a death, you get that phone call, and all of sudden, life has changed.
Mirroring Alkan’s prelude, “Shattering Sea” commences with a deep rumble in the piano’s lower register. Amos then develops her interpretation of Alkan’s melody. While Alkan’s original emphasizes the piano’s higher register to evoke a sense of distance between the “madwoman” and the sea, Amos grounds her piece in the middle and lower registers. She gradually builds intensity, introducing pizzicato strings and urgent wind instruments, before settling into a rhythmic, Bartók-esque groove. It is then that Amos begins to sing the stark opening lines:
that is not my Blood on the bedroom floor
that is not the Glass that I threw before
Following the initial “shattering,” Amos envisions the listener accompanying the central female figure “in her psychological process through the night.” Night of Hunters concludes at dawn, leaving the ultimate resolution open to interpretation. However, Amos expresses her personal inclination towards hope. The final song, “Carry,” certainly resonates with this sentiment. Against a backdrop of warm strings, Amos initially hints at the melodic contour of Debussy’s “The girl with the flaxen hair.” She then sings with growing conviction:
Love hold my hand help me see with the dawn
that those that have left are not gone
The song builds to a powerful refrain:
You will not ever be forgotten by me
In the precession of the mighty stars
your name is sung and tattooed now on my heart
here I will carry carry carry you forever
For me, Amos’s lyrics poignantly echo Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle’s poem “La fille aux cheveux de lin,” Debussy’s original inspiration. Like Amos’s song, Leconte de Lisle’s poem begins at daybreak:
Seated among the flowering alfalfa,
who is singing in the cool morning?
It is the girl with the flaxen hair,
the beauty with the cherry lips.
Leconte de Lisle’s poem depicts “the girl with the flaxen hair” as an idealized, silent figure, an object of admiration and distant desire. In contrast, Amos’s rendition grants the “girl,” now a woman, agency and voice. She becomes the active subject, determined to “carry” her loved one, even if only in memory. Through Night of Hunters, Tori Amos doesn’t just revisit classical music songs; she reclaims and reimagines them, offering a powerful and contemporary dialogue with the past.
Bibliography
Amos, Tori. Night of Hunters. 2011. Deutsche Grammophon, compact disc.
Leconte de Lisle, Charles Marie René. “La fille aux cheveux de lin.” Translation © Richard Stokes, author of The Book of Lieder, published by Faber, provided courtesy of Oxford Lieder.
