Choral

Sacred Latin text,
SATB divisi, a cappella (2008) ca. 7’30”
Commissioned and premiered by Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Thomas Cunningham, director.

Purchase PDFs of the score for your choir via PayPal:

Program note:

On June 8, 2007, the Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Tom Cunningham, director, premiered my The Whole World Was Listening, a new work they commissioned from me as part of their New Music for New York commissioning project. Each year, the MCE commissions four composers to write short works, and then selects one of those composers to receive a larger commission to be completed the following year. I was selected for the larger commission, to be premiered June 8, 2008.

The context for the commission was that I was to write a new work that to be included on a concert of Rachmaninoff’s choral masterpiece, Vespers, or All Night Vigil. Vespers was divided in the performance into two halves, and my piece was premiered in that space in the middle. After perusing several collections of Znammeny Chant, I chose passages from a Communion Chant that I integrated into the final piece, laying the text of the Lux Aeterna portion of the Mass over it.

Lux Aeterna
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,
quia pius es.
Requiem aeternam dona eis Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis,
quia pius es.

Translation:
Let everlasting light shine upon them, Lord,
with Thy saints for ever,
for Thou art merciful.
Grant them eternal rest, Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them,
for Thou art merciful.

Soprano and Tenor soloists, off-stage SATB quartet, SATB choir divisi, a cappella, with or without bass drum and including aleatoric elements (2007) ca. 7’
Carl Sandburg, Text.

Premiered and commissioned by the Manhattan Choral Ensemble, Tom Cunningham, director, as part of their New Music for New York commissioning project.

Purchase a PDF of the score for $1 per copy via PayPal:

Click here to open a PDF sample of the first 10 pages in a new window.

Program notes:

Detecting in the poem three kinds of narratives/emotional/functional states, loosely paralleling a Freudian division, I carved up the musical forces so that

1. the soprano solo (and by extension the solo quartet) is the voice of religion/reason/conscience (super-ego)
2. the tenor solo is the narrator/objective observer (ego)
3. the choir proper represents the impulse toward violence (hence their essential wordlessness and martial stomping) that we somehow never seem to collectively keep in check (id)

Jaws – Carl Sandburg

SEVEN nations stood with their hands on the jaws of death.
It was the first week in August, Nineteen Hundred Fourteen.
I was listening, you were listening, the whole world was listening,
And all of us heard a Voice murmuring:
“I am the way and the light,
He that believeth in me
Shall not perish
But shall have everlasting life.”
Seven nations listening heard the Voice and answered:
“O Hell!”
The jaws of death began clicking and they go on clicking.
“O Hell!”

SAB with soprano solo and piano accompaniment (2006) ca. 3’30″
Arrangement of two Latvian lullabies.
Premiered July 2006, at the VII International Festival for Young Latvian Musicians, Ogre, Latvia.

Listen to the premiere (put together in two short rehearsals):

Purchase a PDF of the score for $1 per copy via PayPal (Comes with pronunciation guide):

Program note:

This piece interweaves elements from two of the more popular Latvian lullabies, with sparse commentary/doubling in the piano part. The piece was written assuming few male singers. If there are many male voices in your choir, you might want to consider giving the solo line to more than one singer. Use your judgment based on the dynamic balance available of your group.

Text:
Mazi bērni, maza bēda,
Lieli bērni, liela bēda, ā!
Mazi bērni maizi prasa,
Lieli bērni sudrabiņa, ā!
Pasniedz, pelīt, miedziņu caur paceples lodziņu, ā!
Ka kaķītis neredzētu, ka pelīti nenomiegtu, ā!
Aiz kalniņa mēnestiņis, aijā, žūžū, ripu rapu uzripoja, aijā, žūžū.
Mēnestiņis man iedeva, Savu zvaigžņu mētelīti, aijā, žūžū.

Translation:
Little children, little worry,
Big children, great worry, oh!
Little children demand bread,
Big children demand silver, oh!
I can see through a tiny window
The warm little mouse who brings you slumber, oh!
I pray the cat does not see him.
I pray the cat will let him be, oh!
A little moon is rising above the hill, lullaby.
The moon gave me his coat of stars, lullaby.

Women’s voices divisi into 8 parts, a cappella (2004) ca. 4’45”
Ihara Saikaku, Text.
Premiered by Putni, Antra Drege, Director, in Riga, Latvia, and taken on their American Tour, fall 2006.

Listen to an MP3 of a live performance by Lawrence University’s Cantala Women’s Choir, directed by Phillip A. Swan, May 30, 2009:

Purchase a PDF of the score for $1 per copy via PayPal:

Click on the image to open a perusal PDF (pages 1-6) in a new window:

Text:

I have gazed at it now
For two years too long
The moon of the floating world.

Anna Akhmatova, Text.
SATB a cappella (2004) ca. 3’

Premiered by San Francisco Choral Artists, Magen Solomon, director.

Listen to a recording of the Cantilena Chamber Choir, Andrea Goodman, director:

Purchase a PDF of the score for $1 per copy via PayPal:

Click on the image to open a perusal PDF of pages 1 & 2 in a new window:

Program note:

Anna Akhmatova was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1889 and lived there through the terrible times of the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s reign, dying in 1966. Unlike many of her contemporaries in the intelligentsia, she elected to remain in Russia at great personal risk. This small poem is a beautiful testament to how the will of the people and the reality of the state can be so painfully at odds with one another.

Nyet, i nye pod chuzhdim nyebosvodom,
I nye pod zashchitoy chuzhdykh kryl
Ya byla togda s’moim narodom,
Tam, gdye moy narod, k’nyeschastyu, byl.

No, not under the vault of alien skies,
and not under the shelter of alien wings —
I was with my people then,
There, where my people, unfortunately, were.

-trans. Orlando Figes

Text by Mark Strand
for SATB with piano (2001, rev. 2005) ca. 5’30”
Commissioned as part of the Dale Warland Singers’ New Choral Music Commissioning Program, with major funding provided by the Jerome Foundation and additional support from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.

Purchase a PDF of the score for $1 per copy via PayPal:

Click on the image to open a perusal PDF (pages 1-5) in a new window.

Sometimes there is great wisdom in simplicity, and I was attracted to this text because of its powerful, simple message: love yourself. In a way, the poem seems a continuation of Robert Frost’s Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, and certainly the imagery is very Frostian. In my setting of the text I tried to provide a simple accompaniment that is suggestive of walking, sometimes slowly, sometimes moderately, and also to evoke through harmonic color the kinds of imagery pervasive in the poem. At the same time, I saw the poem as ultimately one arc that leads to the final line, and the music is similarly structured.

LINES FOR WINTER

Tell yourself
as it gets cold and gray falls from the air
that you will go on
walking, hearing
the same tune no matter where
you find yourself —
inside the dome of dark
or under the cracking white
of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow.
Tonight as it gets cold
tell yourself
what you know which is nothing
but the tune your bones play
as you keep going. And you will be able
for once to lie down under the small fire
of winter stars.
And if it happens that you cannot
go on or turn back
and you find yourself
where you will be at the end,
tell yourself
in that final flowing of cold through your limbs
that you love what you are.

— Mark Strand