• This title was commissioned by the Johan Franco Composition Fund of The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America.

1. Accidentally apply only to notes they precede except in case(s) of immediate repetition of pitch or pattern of pitches.
2. The metronomic indication should be adhered to as closely as possible so that the more brilliant and virtuosic passages make their full effect.
3. Grace notes should be played as rapidly as possible.
4. In order to make the division of notes between the right and left hands as clear as possible, the composer has laid out the manual parts over two staves (rather than using the traditional one-staff notation).
5. 
6. 

Easter Dawning was commissioned by The Guild of Carillonneurs in North America and the final revised version of the work was completed in March 1992. Easter Dawning was premiered by Don Cook on the Deeds Carillon at Dayton, Ohio, on June 13, 1992.

Although many of my previous works had included a wide range of bell sonorities (deriving from both the conventional and exotic instruments), I was initially rather bemused when confronted with the special technical and idiomatic demands imposed by carillon composition. But even within the confines of a short piece I wanted to explore both the bravura and expressive potentialities of the instrument. After having learned too that the octatonic scale sounds especially well on the carillon, I made this scale the principal harmonic and melodic source for the work!

The title Easter Dawning occurred to me as an apt description of both the jubilant and the more reflective aspects of the music.

—George Crumb