Prospero's Rooms (original) (raw)

Prospero's Rooms is a single-movement orchestral composition by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, for which Rouse was composer-in-residence, and was completed in 2011. The title comes from the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Masque of the Red Death," in which the main character Prince Prospero and his fellow aristocrats try to escape the ravages of a plague known as the "Red Death" by locking themselves away from the outside world during a masquerade ball.