Spring Forward: Part One
The warmer weather has allowed me to go outside more regularly, and I’ve been so grateful for the beautiful parks nearby!
Special Note 1: This past week, there was a violent and racially-motivated act of terror inflicted upon the Asian American community, resulting in the deaths of 8 people—a majority of whom were Asian-American women. I wanted to share two important links. This site is a compilation of resources to combat anti-Asian violence, and this is a link to donate to the impacted Asian community in Georgia.
Special Note 2: There has been a lot of discussion in the music community surrounding the recent death of the sexual predator, James Levine. Many prominent figures in the classical music industry have been engaging in apologist behavior in light of his “accomplishments” in the field of music. I will not be among them. No amount of craft in any field is worth the victimization of other human beings; James Levine leveled his power and prestige to protect himself from the consequences of his actions and to silence and intimidate survivors. I encourage you to read this post by Kenneth Woods and this article by A.Z. Madonna on the topic.
Spring Forward
Now that I’m halfway through the Spring Forward projects, I’m so excited to share a little bit more about the first set of pieces I wrote during my break from the blog!
Sanctus and Agnus Dei - Canterbury House
In Bloomington, Indiana the university (where I completed my masters) has an Episcopal Campus Ministry that generally congregates at a venue known as Canterbury House. As part of their community activities, they sometimes host presentations and guest lectures on various topics. They reached out to participate in this project, commissioning two short pieces of service music and scheduling a guest lecture about the pieces and my other work later this spring! Having never written service music before, I was really excited to tackle the challenge. I was raised by both a Catholic and a Lutheran parent, and my mother was an accompanist, singer, and the children’s choir director for her church a great many years (“Not that many,” I hear Mom saying), so I had a lot of exposure to service music growing up. Mom was always throwing us in the car to sing in the choir or play our instruments at church (my brother plays violin recreationally, and my sister use to play clarinet—though now she sings and is learning piano). Working on this music brought back so many memories of my family. While I am missing them terribly during the pandemic, it was comforting to work on these pieces with them in mind.
I’m also happy to share that the music director for Canterbury was kind enough to record the piano part for me on their keyboard for me to share with you! Check out more about the pieces below.
Agnus Dei
For both pieces, Canterbury asked that I write works that could be used in any part of the church season (so neither too solemn nor overly jubilant), and that the melody would be restricted to about an octave vocal range. In the Agnus Dei, I use lush chords and a mix of eighth notes and triplets to create a sweeping and rich texture—filling out the relatively simple vocal part. In my church growing up, this part of the mass was usually done as a call-and-response with the cantor, so it was an interesting challenge to write a setting meant for an entirely congregational singing.
Sanctus
For the Sanctus, I wanted to write something that was a bit more dance-like and forward-moving. The six-eight melody begins in the lower half of the voice, allowing for a more dramatic arrival on the first iteration of the word “Hosana.” It’s also no mistake that the highest note of the melody comes at the very end, on the last part of the word “highest.” The result is a lilting but strongly-voiced setting.
Star in a Jar - Glacier Creek Middle School
One of the great joys of these projects has been reconnecting with old friends and colleagues from school who are now teaching and conducting ensembles of their own. For this project, I had the pleasure of reconnecting with my Luther College friend, Kristen Flak, who teaches orchestra at schools in the Madison, WI area. We polled some general ideas from students (what mood/tone did they want me to write about, what are some things they’d like to learn how to do on their instruments, what kinds of music do they listen to now), and a majority of the class was interested in playing something that dealt with chaos and peace. As I brainstormed a few different directions for what to write about, I started thinking about bubbles—which led me to stumble on a new-to-me phenomena: sonoluminescence.
In simplest terms, sonoluminescence occurs when sound is pumped into a flask filled with water that contains a bubble or bubbles. The sound causes the bubble to expand and then collapse so violently it emits enough light and heat to glow bright blue. The heat on the outer surface has been measured in the 10’s-of-thousands of degrees, and some scientists theorize the core of these explosions may even be hot enough for fusion! The phenomena is sometimes nicknamed as “the star in a jar.”
For this piece, Kristen wanted the work to fit in with their unity on creativity, so I used the piece to explore approachable aleatory and a few simple extended techniques. The opening of the piece starts on held notes, with the ensemble starting in a closely-voiced chord that gradually moves outward by steps. Each of these long notes is made more interesting through the use of dynamics, trills, and/or circular bowing. The next section breaks open into a very simple melody-accompaniment texture, with a few moments of hocketing in the upper voices. Several of the viola and cello students asked to have the melody, so their parts have the focus for a majority of this opening section. Eventually this more traditional music starts to give way—the cello and basses have the melody as the upper voices freely rotate between two arpeggiated figures, shifting in tempo and bow placement. Finally, the cello and bass join the texture, and the piece is now conducted using big cues rather than a conducted meter. Using simple gestures, this chaotic and frenzied section is still simple for the students to perform; they will learn about crush tone (sometimes referred to as scratch tone, crunch tone, etc.), knocking on the wood of their instruments, and other new sounds that will surely endear me to their parents! The piece ends with another melodic section, fading away gradually until the cellos and basses leave us with a final pizzicato.
You, Us, Me - Christopher Rodriguez
I had the great pleasure of writing a work for baritone vocalist, Christopher Rodriguez, during the Commissions from Quarantine project—I was ecstatic when he reached out to collaborate on a longer piece for Spring Forward! In discussing topics for our latest collaboration, he mentioned that he wanted to sing something about unrequited love, and hoped to make use of falsetto throughout the piece. I wanted to write something that showcased both his tender, warm falsetto range and his powerful and emotive lower range. Spending a day to put a short text together, I was excited to start writing.
The text, while told from one person’s perspective, reflects on the emotions of two people during the course of their relationship. Towards the end of work, the text summarizes: “That looking back our love was true, but you loved us and I loved you…”—and this disconnect was something that I hoped to allude to throughout the text and in the music.
Whenever the speaker reflects on how the other person felt (for simplicity let’s just call them X), they speak about things X loved about their relationship (“our aimless drives,” “our cheap nights out at crowded bars,” “long, late talks,” etc.); when the speaker (Y) reflects on their own feelings, they speak about things they loved about X (“the sparkle of mischief in your eyes at night,” “your laugh,” etc.). Musically, I use small variations in both the melody line and the accompaniment. The clearest example of this occurs in the opening sections. When singing about X’s feelings. the opening melody first steps up, takes a small leap down, then a bigger leap up; then the melody leaps down by thirds before leaping up again. For the first section of Y’s feelings, the melody steps down, takes a small step up, and then a small leap up; then, after stepping up, it takes a small leap up only to leap back down again. Where the X melody ultimately ends in the lowest part of Christopher’s register, the melody for Y leaps up near the top.
For the accompaniment, while the overall texture is very similar (eighth notes in the right hand switching between clusters and single notes, the left hand plodding along in the lower registers), the harmony shifts when Y is introduced, and new musical material is brought in for the second half of their first stanza. While the rest of the piece introduces new material for subsequent stanzas, this idea of making small variations is used throughout—growing more and more disparate as the piece continues.
Wind-Up
Was so excited to see PDX crews turning fountains on this week - including some I didn’t even know were there!
I am just wrapping up the first piece for the latter half of the series—Flicker, written for students at HSPVA in Houston, Texas! I will also be writing a work for the SANS; duo and for woodwind-player extraordinaire, Colton Sprenkle—and I couldn’t be more thrilled to talk about these works in the coming weeks!
Also, an exciting announcement regarding Commissions from Quarantine: At the end of the month, on March 31st, I will be uploading the sheet music for all available CfQ pieces to my website—they will be accessible for FREE. You can read more on the CfQ page, and check back soon for more updates!
Happy music-making, everyone!
A beautiful tree I saw this week with an all-white bloom; it was just stunning in the afternoon sunlight.
