Choral

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

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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.

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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!”

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:
Moon_of_the_Floating World

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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:
Rekviem (Audio) target=”blank”

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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.

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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

SSAA with piano accompaniment (1999 rev. 2006) ca. 3’
e.e. cummings, Text.
Commissioned by the Piedmont Choirs, for use in the International Choral Olympics in Linz, Austria, July, 2000.

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Text:

who knows if the moon’s
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky—filled with pretty people?
(and if you and I should

get into it, if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited, where

always
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
In love and flowers pick themselves

SSAA a cappella (1995) 3’30″
Text in Latin.

From the hypnotic Agnus Dei and transcendent Beatus Vir to the joyous Jubilate Deo, immerse yourself in the beauty of Charles Griffin’s 3 Meditations, an original a cappella SSAA choral piece that will transport you to a state of deep contemplation. Premiered and recorded by the Piedmont Choirs under the direction of Bob Geary, it’s perfect for high-school-age women’s ensembles and adult groups alike.

Featuring three short movements set in Latin, each can be performed individually or as a group, giving you the flexibility to customize your performance. Also recorded by the Peninsula Women’s Chorus under the direction of Martin Benvenuto (See Discography), you won’t want to miss adding this future classic to your choral repertoire. 

Audio samples and purchase performance copies are available at ArrangeMe, Sheet Music Direct, and Sheet Music Plus.

SATB a cappella, 3 Movements, (1993) ca. 5’
e.e. cummings, Text.
Premiered by the Plymouth Music Series Ensemble at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
Finalist in the 1995 Chautauqua Choral Composition Contest.

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in Just

I.
in Just
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hopscotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee.

hist whist

II.
hist whist
little ghostthings
tip-toe
twinkle-toe

little twitchy
witches and tingling
goblins
hob-a-nob hob-a-nob

little hoppy happy
toad in tweeds
tweeds
little itchy mousies

with scuttling
eyes rustle and run and
hidehidehide
whisk

whisk look out for the old woman
with the wart on her nose
what she’ll do to yer
nobody knows

for she knows the devil ooch
the devil ouch
the devil
ach the great

green
dancing
devil
devil devil
wheeEEE

Tumbling-hair

III.
Tumbling-hair
picker of buttercups
violets
dandelions
And the big bullying daisies
through the field
wonderful
with eyes a little sorry
Another comes
also picking flowers

Program Note:

These short poems by e. e. cummings contain a wonderful, compact interplay between images that reflect a child’s naiveté and playfulness and an adult’s fear of aging and death. These poems find particular poignancy in the compression of these dual meanings into single images. “In Just- / spring” is the magical moment when the world reveals most strongly its process of renewal, bringing with it sunshine and mud. But here spring also reflects an adult’s perspective (the balloon man’s perspective – he is a figure similar to a pied piper beckoning the children to their inevitable future), one who sees In-Just-[ice] in the cycle of life; spring is a metaphor for time past. “hist whist” is replete with ‘scary’ images: little ghost things, twitchy witches, itchy mousies and worst of all, the old woman that knows the devil himself. “Tumbling-hair” is both the untamed, abundant locks of youth and the loss of hair. In this poem the daisies bully their way through the soil shared by other flowers, representing the relentless push of one generation after another. In the face of these dualities, the narrative voice of the poems belongs to children, and cummings infuses the poems with a childlike charm and vibrancy. The musical settings of these poems aim to infuse a similar charm, with subtle hints at the embedded double-meanings.