Electronics: No Electronics

The Light is Always Changing

The Light is Always Changing was initially inspired by the experience of looking at clouds moving against the snow-covered mountains during my first visit to Alaska in late April and May of 2025. I wrote the piece for Wild Shore New Music, and it was premiered and toured in Homer, Anchorage, and Fairbanks, Alaska as part of Wild Shore’s festival in the fall of 2025.

Two early chants are embedded in the piece: the first phrase of the 10th century Veni creator spiritus gives the harmonic structure, and the 9th century Christe qui lux es et dies supplies melodic material. My hope is that it is as mysterious to distinguish melody versus accompaniment in the music as it is to distinguish clouds versus snow in the right conditions.

The title comes from Nothing Personal, an essay written by James Baldwin in the midst of our country’s turmoil in 1964.

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

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You can hear Wild Shore’s live performance of the piece by visiting 27 April in A Book of Days.

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You can download the performing materials by clicking below, with my thanks for supporting this informal way of publishing:

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As Syllable from Sound

As Syllable from Sound was commissioned by Donald Berman as one of a set of new pieces from four different composers, meant to serve as companions and expansions of Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata. After spending quite a bit of time thinking about how Ives manifested the thinking of Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Thoreau in his music, I felt that to embody Emily Dickinson in music, as Don had requested, I needed to make the simplest thing I could, sitting very near the edge of nothing, but somehow allowing everything to be inside it. Did I succeed at that? Only the listener can decide.

Quotations that are at the center of what I have made:

I play the old, odd tunes yet, which used to flit about your head after honest hours–and wake dear Sue, and madden me, with their grief and fun– (Emily Dickinson, Letter 184, late April 1856)

We are far from having exhausted the significance of the few symbols we use. We can use them yet with a terrible simplicity. It does not need that a poem be long. Every word was once a poem. (Emerson: The Poet, 1844)

Harmony [Charles Ives’ wife] had heard Edie [their daughter, age 4] playing out on the porch in Redding. [She] was picking up her doll and chanting, “Come right up, Dollie, come right up into heaven. I’m an angel — I’m the only angel here — come right in & see me. For God’s dead and I’m lonesome.” (Jan Swafford, Charles Ives: A Life with Music, p. 283)

The Brain — is wider than the Sky —
For — put them side by side —
The one the other will contain
With ease — and You — beside —
The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —
The Brain is just the weight of God —
For — Heft them — Pound for Pound —
And they will differ — if they do —
As Syllable from Sound —

line 3: contain) include

Emily Dickinson J632

There is also a half-secret reference to Aaron Copland, something singers and pianists are likely to recognize.

Why — do they shut Me out of Heaven?
Did I sing — too loud?

As Syllable from Sound is dedicated to Donald Berman with great affection and respect.

You can listen to one of Don’s performances of As Syllable from Sound on 20 October (Charles Ives’ birthday) in my ongoing project A Book of Days.

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Picnic

Picnic is a song for voice and piano, setting a 1967 poem by Adrienne Rich.

Sunday in Inwood Park

            the picnic eaten

the chicken bones scattered

                      for the fox we’ll never see

the children playing in the caves

My death is folded in my pocket

                        like a nylon raincoat

What kind of sunlight is it

                         that leaves the rocks so cold?

Rich wrote this poem towards the end of her marriage to Alfred Haskell Conrad, when she was raising three sons under the age of 12. She wrote about foxes, seen and unseen, many times over the succeeding years.

In An Atlas of the Difficult World, in 1991, she also said: “All picnics are eaten on the grave.”

Picnic is part of my song cycle finish what I haven’t started, about mid-century middle class female unhappiness. The other poets whose words are set in the cycle are Jane Bowles, Lucille Clifton, Anne Sexton, and June Jordan. Picnic is dedicated to Devony Smith and Danny Zelibor, who premiered the cycle under the auspices of the Brooklyn Art Song Society, with immense gratitude for their artistry and sensitivity.

You can listen to Devony and Danny’s premiere performance of Picnic on 19 February in my ongoing project A Book of Days.

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my dream about time

my dream about time is a song for voice and piano, setting Lucille Clifton’s poem by the same name.

a woman unlike myself is running

down the long hall of a lifeless house

with too many windows which open on

a world she has no language for,

running and running until she reaches

at last the one and only door

which she pulls open to find each wall

is faced with clocks and as she watches

all of the clocks strike

                                             NO

my dream about time was written as part of a song cycle called finish what I haven’t started, about mid-century middle class female unhappiness. Other songs in the cycle set poems by Anne Sexton, Jane Bowles, June Jordan, and Adrienne Rich. finish what I haven’t started was commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society, and premiered by Devony Smith and Danny Zelibor in April 2022.

You can listen to Devony and Danny’s April 2025 performance of my dream about time on 20 December in my ongoing project A Book of Days.

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aRound advent

I made aRound Advent for Rodney Lister’s students at New England Conservatory Preparatory Division. It is meant as a sort of companion piece to Maxwell Davies’ piece Long Hope. The original orchestration for aRound Advent  is flute, oboe, and piano. I’m imagining the oboe plays the line that begins in bar 1; the piano plays the bottom line, with or without the lower fifth, as desired. The flute takes the melody that begins in bar 9, and the piano can add the optional fifth below the flute line that begins at bar 17.

You are welcome to make your own arrangement (and transposition) for the forces you have available; I can also send an xml file for you to make whatever parts you might need.

aRound Advent is dedicated to Rodney Lister, with thanks for his many years of friendship and collegiality.

Since Advent is the beginning of the church year in Western Christianity, I chose the first half of Psalm 1 as the text that joins the piece on 8 December in my ongoing project A Book of Days.

Happy are those
who do not follow the advice of the wicked,
or take the path that sinners tread,
or sit in the seat of scoffers;
but their delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law they meditate day and night.

They are like trees
planted by streams of water,
which yield their fruit in its season,
and their leaves do not wither.
In all that they do, they prosper.

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Unearthly Booty

Unearthly Booty is a solo piano piece that I wrote as a gift for my dear friend and collaborator, Thomas Feng. It was inspired by a whole network of associations, which I’ll try to outline reasonably compactly for you here…

One summer, on a hike in the Vermont woods, Thomas and I came across a patch of ghostly white flowers, which we learned are called “ghost pipes.” They are plants, but they don’t have chlorophyll and can’t photosynthesize; instead, they feed parasitically on fungi. Scientists call these plants “mycorrhizal cheaters”.

It happens that ghost pipes were the favorite flower of Emily Dickinson, with whom I spent a great deal of time during the pandemic, finding her to be an excellent role model for life during lockdown. By chance, Emily’s brother’s mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, sent Emily a drawing of ghost pipes, and Emily’s thank you note to her is a sly masterpiece.

Upon reading Emily’s letter, I knew I needed to make Unearthly Booty for Thomas. Having the title in hand, I began to look for the right flower from which to steal chlorophyll.

Thomas and I share a love for the music of Milton Babbitt. Thomas plays several of Milton’s quicksilver piano pieces really beautifully, even hungrily. I studied with Milton as a student at Princeton many years ago, and his omnivorous playfulness had a huge influence on my development.

Around the same time that I read Emily’s letter to her brother’s mistress, the violinist and composer Erik Carlson contacted me about a long-lost little piece Milton had written for my about-to-be husband and me, which inspired me to find it in my files. (You can hear Chris Gross’ recording of Eppesithalamium here.)

I decided to make use of Milton’s small cello piece as inspiration for Unearthly Booty. I spent some time relearning 12-tone technique as it was practiced in central New Jersey in the late 1970s in order to reverse-engineer (decompose? metabolize?) Milton’s piece and re-form it as a set of fantasy variations in the form of a diptych that ranges ever further from the source.

Making this piece was deeply enjoyable. I am so grateful to Thomas, to Emily and Mabel, to Milton, to Erik and Chris, and also to my long-ex-husband Frank Brickle, without whom Eppesithalamium and also Unearthly Booty would not exist.

The two movements of Unearthly Booty appear in my ongoing project A Book of Days on 10 May (Milton Babbitt’s birthday) and 28 November.

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wait till tonight

Wait Till Tonight is a song for solo voice, setting a poem by Bill Knott.

Sometimes a dream will show me
the words I need to begin and end and
then take them away and leave just one
word or, like last night, three or four:
“the arms of care.” That’s all. There
were lots more but they vanished when
my eyes opened; they were of course
the words I need here now to justify
this. How can I forgive myself for
forgetting them, forgetting that which
might have made me whole for a while
holding you all in my arms of care?

Wait Till Tonight was written in December 2023 at the MacDowell Colony as the closing number in a song cycle of the same name, setting poems of Bill Knott, The cycle was commissioned by the Copland House, with support from the New York State Council on the Arts and Frederick and Alexandra Peters, and premiered by Lucy Fitz-Gibbon, soprano, and Michael Boriskin, piano.

Wait Till Tonight is 22 December in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my own recording of the piece there. Plunge, Peace,  Dream Amid Bed-woods, and First Sight are the other songs in the cycle.

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First Sight

First Sight is a song for voice and piano. It is the fourth song in a cycle called Wait Till Tonight, setting five poems of Bill Knott. The piece was written in December 2023 at the MacDowell Colony and is dedicated to Leanh Nguyen, who showed me how to open the door to summer in the midst of a New Hampshire winter.

Summer is entered through screendoors,
and therefore seems unclear
at first sight, when it is in fact
a mesh of fine wires
suspended panewise
whose haze has confused the eyes …

What if we never entered then—
what if the days remained like this,
a hesitation at the threshold of itself,
expectant, tense, tensile
as lines that crisscross each other
in a space forever latent
where we wait, pressed up against
something trying to retain its vagueness.

First Sight is 24 June in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my own recording of the piece there. Plunge, Peace, Dream Amid Bed-woods, and Wait Till Tonight are the other songs in the cycle.

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Dream Amid Bed-woods

Dream Amid Bed-woods is a song for voice and piano. It is the third song in a cycle called Wait Till Tonight, setting five poems of Bill Knott.

You must pull down sheets from these linen trees,
Blankets too, a pillowcase in full leaf,
But can’t: to snooze amongst their fruits, beneath
The sheath of that composite canopy’s
Roost, you must raise yourself past hammock heights—
Up where its deepest roots feel doubly sapped,
That orchard dormitory might lie wrapped
And ripe with you, whose foliage still invites
>More lure of surface sleep. But must you trust
The ease in these boughs, the sway of whose loft
So often now wakes vows to never rest,
To somehow remain alow, to resist
All berth above: you must push off this soft
Palleted grove, this tall, forest mattress.

Dream Amid Bed-woods is 29 August in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my own recording of the piece there. Plunge,  Peace,  and First Sight are also songs in the cycle; the title song will be available soon.

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Prelude (1979)

This Prelude from 1979 might be the first piece of music I’ve written that still exists. I came across the hand-copied page in the summer of 2023. I made a live recording in Chapman Studio at MacDowell in December, 44 years almost to the day from when I wrote the piece.

Do you maybe recognize in this little apprentice piece something of the person I am now?

I hope so.

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Prelude (1979) is part of my ongoing project A Book of Days. You can hear my original demo of the piece by visiting 11 December.

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For a performing score, please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

 

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Point.B

Point.B is short for pointillistic Beethoven. Written for the students at Greenwood Music Camp, on a program that included Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, it’s a sort of messed up data visualization that refracts the delightfully lumbering Furtwängler recording through a pointillistic Reichian lens.

Many thanks to the conductor Ben Rous for advice and wisdom while I was making the piece.

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Point.B is part of my ongoing project A Book of Days. You can listen to a recording of the premiere by visiting 8 August.

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I think the piece works best on a program that includes Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony, but of course I’m open to you programming it any time you like!

Here’s a score of the piece: for a set of performing materials, please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing.

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Peggy in the Twilight

Peggy in the Twilight is one of a set of songs I’ve been making with James Moore, Andie Tanning, and Jim Fletcher, based on the poetry of James Tate. This one is for speaking violinist and guitar. We’re calling the project What are the Chances?, which is the last line James Tate wrote. I don’t think we know yet whether that’s the name of the band as well.

Here’s the text of Peggy in the Twilight.

Peggy spent half of each day trying to wake up, and the other half preparing for sleep. Around five, she would mix herself something preposterous and ’40s-ish like a Grasshopper or a Brass Monkey, adding a note of gaiety to her defeat. This shadowlife became her. She always had a glow on; that is, she carried an aura of innocence as well as death with her.

I first met her at a party almost thirty years ago. Even then it was too late for tragic women, tragic anything. Still, when she was curled up and fell asleep in the corner, I was overwhelmed with feelings of love. Petite black and gold angels sat on her slumped shoulders and sang lullabies to her.

I walked into another room and asked our host for a blanket for Peggy.

“Peggy?” he said. “There’s no one here by that name.” And so my lovelife began.

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Peggy in the Twilight is part of my ongoing project A Book of Days. You can hear a demo recording of the piece by visiting 25 October.

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only your dolls

only your dolls is a song for voice and piano, setting a poem by Anne Sexton called Sixth Psalm.

The piece is part of a song cycle called finish what I haven’t started, about mid-century middle class female unhappiness. Other songs in the cycle set poems by June Jordan, Jane Bowles, and Lucille Clifton. finish what I haven’t started was commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society, and premiered by Devony Smith and Danny Zelibor in April 2022.

The photograph is one of a series of images made by a family friend, Jo Ann Krivin. They have haunted me since childhood.

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For America is a lady rocking on a porch in an unpainted house on an unused road but Anne does not see it.

For America is a librarian in Wichita coughing dust and sharing sourballs with the postman.

For America is Dr. Abraham passing out penicillin and sugar pills to the town of Woolrich, Pennsylvania.

For America is an old man washing his feet in Albion, Michigan. Drying them carefully and then applying Dr. Scholl’s foot powder. But Anne does not see it. Anne is locked in.

For America is a reformed burglar turned locksmith who pulls up the shades of his shop at nine A.M. daily (except Sunday when he leaves his phone number on the shop door).

For America is a fat woman dusting a grand piano in English Creek, New Jersey.

For America is a suede glove manufacturer sitting in his large swivel chair feeling the goods and assessing his assets and debits.

For America is a bus driver in Embarrass, Minnesota, clocking the miles and watching the little cardboard suitcases file by.

For America is a land of Commies and Prohibitionists but Anne does not see it. Anne is locked in. The Trotskyites don’t see her. The Republicans have never tweaked her chin for she is not there. Anne hides inside folding and unfolding rose after rose. She has no one. She has Christopher. They sit in their room pinching the dolls’ noses, poking the doll’s eyes. One time they gave a doll a ride in a fuzzy slipper but that was too far, too far wasn’t it. Anne did not dare. She put the slipper with the doll inside it as in a car right into the closet and pushed the door shut.

For America is the headlight man at the Ford plant in Detroit, Michigan, he of the wires, he of the white globe, all day, all day, all year, all his year’s headlights, seventy a day, improved by automation but Anne does not.

For America is a miner in Ohio, slipping into the dark hole and bringing forth cat’s eyes each night.

For America is only this room… there is no useful activity.

For America only your dolls are cheerful.

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only your dolls is part of my ongoing project A Book of Days. You can hear Devony Smith and Danny Zelibor’s beautiful recording of the piece by visiting 4 October.

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For a performing score, please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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CALLING ON ALL SILENT MINORITIES

CALLING ON ALL SILENT MINORITIES is a song for voice and piano, setting a poem by June Jordan.

HEY

C’MON
COME OUT

WHEREVER YOU ARE

WE NEED TO HAVE THIS MEETING
AT THIS TREE

AIN’ EVEN BEEN
PLANTED
YET

CALLING ON ALL SILENT MINORITIES was written as the closing song in a cycle called finish what I haven’t started, about mid-century middle class female unhappiness. Other songs in the cycle set poems by Anne Sexton, Jane Bowles, and Lucille Clifton. finish what I haven’t started was commissioned by the Brooklyn Art Song Society with partial funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and premiered by Devony Smith and Danny Zelibor in April 2022.

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CALLING ON ALL SILENT MINORITIES is part of my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my recording of the piece by visiting 7 March.

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For performing materials, please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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a murmur in the trees

A Murmur in the Trees is a half hour piece by Eve Beglarian, made in response to Robert Black’s idea to set a piece for twenty-four double basses playing in a grove of trees. The music was created by treating a piece of birch bark as a musical score, where the lines on the birch bark are notes that are read at the rate of one-third inch per minute, said to be the speed at which plant signals travel. The y-axis has been mapped to notes in the overtone series, so the basses are playing open strings and up to seven harmonics above each string, creating a palette of 32 possible pitches. The title is inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson.

In live performance, audience members are free to move among the players. The sounds of the basses merge with the music of the birds, wind, and trees. The basses are playing in honor of the trees from which they are made, as much as for the humans who experience the music.

For the recording, released on Cantaloupe Music in September 2026, Robert Black tracked each of the twenty-four parts three times. Eve recorded the sounds of early fall twilight on her land in Brandon, Vermont, and we created both a stereo and an immersive mix that emulates the richness of the experience of hearing the piece live. Robert’s recording is the last he made; he died in June of 2023.

Development of A Murmur in the Trees was sponsored by a 2020 grant from the MAP Fund for Eve and Robert to do a project with visual artist Aviva Rahmani and choreographer Yoshiko Chuma, a project that took a different form due to COVID-19.

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There is no score of the piece in standard notation. Performers listen to audio guide tracks that give them the information they need to play the piece. Parts range in difficulty so that even very beginning students and amateur community members can participate alongside professional musicians.

If you are interested in presenting A Murmur in the Trees in your community, please reach out to us here.

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Circumference

Circumference is a small piano etude written for my friend Ryan McMasters as I am beginning work on a larger piano piece about Emily Dickinson for Donald Berman. I was practicing the Major 7th exercises in Patterns for Jazz at the time. Each hand of this little etude is not difficult, but putting them together will keep you engaged for a while!

Emily Dickinson wrote to Thomas Higginson in 1862, “My Business is Circumference.”

Circumference is 26 July in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear a recording of the piece there.

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For a performing score of the piece, please click the donation link below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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Plunge

Plunge is a song for voice and piano, setting a poem by Bill Knott. It is part of a cycle based on his poetry, commissioned by Frederick Peters and Music from the Copland House for Lucy Fitz Gibbon and Michael Boriskin. Other songs in the cycle include Peace (Pascal) and Dream Amid Bed-woods; more will be available soon!

at night one drop of rain
falls from each star
as if it were being lowered
on a string

and yet that storm of plummets
is never enough
to wet any of the planets
that pass through it

only the blackness the space
between us is washed
away by these singular
lettings-down of water

distance is washed away
all the worlds merge
for a liquid moment
our island eyes

and suddenly we understand
why umbrellas love
to dive
into clouds

Plunge was written in July 2022, when the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope were being shared. Written for AddieRose Brown and Claire Forstman, it is dedicated to them with great affection.

Plunge is 12 July in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my original composer demo of the piece there.

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Peace (Pascal)

Peace (Pascal) is a song for voice and piano. It is the opening song in a cycle called Wait Till Tonight, setting five poems of Bill Knott.

There is a valley
Is the oldest story.

Its temperate qualities
Make us descend the trees
To settle down beside
Fruits and fields.

By its river content
To sit quietly in a small tent
To fashion fishing spears
From fallen limbs.

No need to climb its hills
No need to go up there
To look to see
Another valley.

Note:
“Most of our problems proceed from our inability to sit quietly in a small room.” –Pascal

The piece was written in slightly belated honor of Fred Peters on his 70th birthday, and is dedicated to him with vast affection. Despite Fred’s boundless energy and love of ALL the valleys, he is also quite able to sit quietly in a small room, which might be the best combination of personal qualities there is!

Peace (Pascal) was premiered on September 15, 2022 at The Century Club, New York City, by Music from Copland House (Lucy Fitz Gibbon, soprano and Michael Boriskin, pianist) at the celebration honoring Fred’s many years of service to NMUSA.

Peace (Pascal) is 28 December in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my own recording of the piece there. Plunge, Dream Amid Bed-woods, and First Sight are also songs in the cycle; the others will be available soon.

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For performing materials, please click the donation link below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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See Right Through Me (Albert’s Confession)

See Right Through Me is a song for a vocalist accompanying themself on cuatro. Originally written for The Vicksburg Project, an evening-length show about the experiences of women and gender-expansive people in Vicksburg, Mississippi, it is the imagined confession of Albert Cashier, an illiterate Irish orphan who enlisted in the Army soon after emigrating to the United States alone.

Albert served the Union for four years, then returned to Illinois to work as a handyman and gardener. Late in life, he was hit by a car and taken to the hospital, where the doctors determined that Albert must have been assigned female at birth. So they dressed him in women’s clothes, and put him in an insane asylum, where he died from a fall he sustained tripping over his unaccustomed skirts.

The song incorporates allusions to Walt Whitman’s early poems about the war, a quotation from a Sean nós song called “Táim curtha ó bheith im’aonair im’lui (I’m weary of lying alone)” and from a then popular poem about dead comrades called “Oft in the Stilly Night.”

See Right Through Me is 9 November in my ongoing project A Book of Days, and you can hear my own recording of the piece there.

TO THE PERFORMER

The song is written for a transgender, genderqueer and/or gender-expansive person who inhabits the masculine. You should transpose the piece so that the first section sits as low as possible in your tessitura, and the last section needs to feel vulnerably high. Easy for an untrained voice, harder for a professionally trained singer. The middle section should be sung without particular regard to the accompaniment: you keep playing the A section chords, but you sing the battle section in a marching 12/8. Please make sure you re-align with the accompaniment correctly before starting the final section “Everyone knows.”

If you can’t get hold of a cuatro, you can adapt the piece for ukulele or acoustic guitar.

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For a performing score (along with the optional warped recording of a hermit thrush you can trigger as a momentary underscore), please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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You See Where This Is Going

You See Where This Is Going is a setting of a poem by Brendan Constantine about the flower you must never name (in American poetry.) I found an equation that was named rhodonea by the 18th century Italian mathematician Guido Grandi because its plot resembles a rose. If n is odd, the rose is n-petalled. If n is even, the rose is 2n-petalled. I used this equation to create the music that is played by the pizzicato strings, but it’s actually in the spaces between those events where the piece unfolds.

Maybe the piece is about how naming things obscures them, representing them (and us) as something quite other than what we are, and there’s a kind of imposter syndrome we feel by not being able to live into all the implications of our names.

You See Where This Is Going was written for my beloved friends loadbang (baritone singer, clarinet, trumpet, trombone) and string ensemble with the generous support of another beloved friend and colleague Vittoria Chierici, one of whose rose paintings is the image you see above.

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You can visit February 23rd in my ongoing project A Book of Days to hear and see the premiere recording with video by Luke DuBois.

For performing materials, please click the buy button below.

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Who Else

I received Crispin Best’s poem from Matthew Ogle’s Pome in the early days of lockdown. I made a piece from it in May 2020.

Who Else

i tell the same stories
again and again
because who else is going to
and what are the builders making

apart from a racket
the black mould in my room makes it feel
like the wall is learning something

i tell my computer i’m not a robot
when it asks
because who else is going to

i can’t believe you thanked me
for sleeping in your bed

if a tree falls in the forest
that’s fine

• Crispin Best (2019)

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You can hear my recording of Who Else by visiting 23 March in A Book of Days.

For performing materials, please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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Sang

Sang is a piece for large chorus with santur and percussion. The main text for Sang is a story from the Shahnameh, the 10th century Persian epic by Ferdowsi. Here is a translation of that story, by Dick Davis:

Going forward in the darkness, the army heard a voice from a black mountain nearby, which said, “Whoever takes stones from this mountain will be sorry for what he holds in his hand, and whoever takes nothing will be sorry and look for a balm to ease his heart’s pain.” The soldiers listened to the voice, and wondered what the words could mean, since whether they took stones or didn’t, they couldn’t see what their future sufferings would be. One said, “The pain will be because of sin, that’s the regret for taking stones along the way.” Another said, “We should take a little; everyone has to suffer some pain.” Some took stones, some took none, some out of laziness took only a few.

When they left the land where the water of life was, and found themselves on the plain once more, the road was no longer dark and each man looked at what he’d tucked in his sleeves or his tunic, and so the deceiving riddle was revealed. One found his clothes filled with rubies, another with uncut gems, and they were sorry they had taken so few and hadn’t taken emeralds as well. But those who had ignored the precious stones and taken nothing were even more sorry.

In addition to this text, sung in Persian, I incorporated three texts from the Hebrew scriptures. The first is God’s promise to the Persian King Cyrus in Isaiah 45: “I will give you the treasure of darkness and riches hidden in secret places.” I found other Biblical references to the transformation of stones to jewels, of dust to gold, and I decided to thread these texts (in Hebrew and Septuagint Greek) into my telling of the Shahnameh story.

I hope the piece illustrates how Persian, Hebrew, and Greek (and by extension Islamic, Jewish, and Christian) are intertwined cultures whose shared roots go back to the Zoroastrian revelations, and perhaps even earlier than that.

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While I spent time studying and listening to traditional Persian music in my preparations for writing this piece, and with the guidance of the musicians who performed the premiere, Manoochehr Sadeghi and Pejman Hadadi, I spent a good deal of time with the radif, a compendium of ur-melodies that is a unique source of material for traditional performers, I did not attempt to write a “Persian” piece, which, after all, would be a ridiculous undertaking for an American, even one whose father grew up in Tehran, as mine did.

Instead, my goal was to embody the story in sound as vividly as I can, so that even if you don’t understand a word of the text, the narrative has an impact. And I tried to create a structure that allows the improvising traditional instrumentalists to fully engage their unique artistry in communicating that story, asking not simply for traditional virtuosity, but giving them shared conceptual responsibility for bringing the piece to life.

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Sang was commissioned by the Los Angeles Master Chorale for a project called LA is the World, and premiered at Disney Hall in June of 2007 under the direction of Grant Gershon. I cannot post the recording of the actual performance, but here are two demo recordings which include Pejman Hadadi on percussion and Manoochehr Sadeghi on santur performing some of their music along with my draft recording of the choral music. You do not hear the santur improvisation that connects the two segments of the piece in live performance, but I hope these rough recordings will nonetheless give you an idea of the complete piece.

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Here is a score of the piece in pdf format. I believe this piece could be effectively performed by chorus with instruments other than santur and percussion. Please contact me if you would like to talk about mounting the piece.

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Everything

Everything is a song for female voice and bass flute. It is part of a song cycle called The Story of B, the lyrics of which are adapted from the poetry of Pierre Louÿs, a fin-de-siècle French poet who claimed to be translating ancient Greek lesbian poetry, but in fact he made it all up himself.

The original French text that I used to make my adaptation goes like this:

Tout, et ma vie, et le monde, et les hommes, tout ce qui n’est pas elle n’est rien. Tout ce qui n’est pas elle, je te le donne, passant.

Sait-elle que de travaux j’accomplis pour être belle à ses yeux, par ma coiffure et par mes fards, par mes robes et mes parfums?

Aussi longtemps je tournerais la meule, je ferais plonger la rame ou je bêcherais la terre, s’il fallait à ce prix la retenir ici.

Mais faites qu’elle ne l’apprenne jamais, Déesses qui veillez sur nous! Le jour où elle saura que je l’aime elle cherchera une autre femme.

Here’s my version:

Everything: my life,
the world, the men,
everything that is not her
is nothing.

Does she know how hard I work
to be beautiful to her?

I would row to China,
I would build a pyramid,
I would plow the dark earth
with my bare hands.

Goddesses, don’t let her know.
The day she learns I love her
she will look for another.

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You can hear my recording of the piece with my longtime collaborator Margaret Lancaster on bass flute by visiting 10 October in A Book of Days. Another song from The Story of B is Solitude.

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You can download the performing score for Everything by clicking one of the buttons below, with my thanks for supporting this informal way of publishing:

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None More Than You

None More Than You was a dual commission from the Dessoff Choirs and Roomful of Teeth for a piece celebrating the 200th birthday of Walt Whitman.

My ideas for making a piece highlighting the very different vocal qualities of the two groups were crystallized by a metaphor I happened to come across in Kierkegaard’s Sickness unto Death: “Necessity is like a sequence of consonants only, but in order to utter them there must in addition be possibility. When this is lacking, when a human existence is brought to the pass that it lacks possibility, it is in despair, and every instant it lacks possibility, it is in despair.”

I asked the members of Roomful of Teeth to try to utter the most famous text about words in Western culture, the opening of the Gospel of John, using only consonants. Of course, it is impossible to do this. In order to make sounds, we use air, and air has shape. But that’s what Roomful of Teeth spends the first half of None More Than You trying to do:

N th bgnng wz th wrd,
nd th wrd wz wth gd,
nd th wrd wz gd.
nwn hz vr sn gd.

In response, the Dessoff choir sings lines from Whitman’s Song of the Rolling Earth, which talk about how the words we need to live are everywhere around us, and even inside us:

Were you thinking that those were the words, those upright lines?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are in the ground and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.

The music the Dessoff choir sings is inspired by the really stunning incarnation moment in the Credo of Josquin’s Missa Pange Lingua. It’s kind of ironic that pange lingua means “Tell, tongue” since Whitman says it’s better not to:

I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best,
I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.

In the course of the piece, the Dessoff singers help the Teeth singers move from the place of stringent necessity to a place of endless possibility, and the last part of the piece is nothing but vowels.

Many thanks to the members of Roomful of Teeth: Estelí­, Martha, Caroline, Virginia, Eric, Thann, Dashon, and Cameron, and Brad Wells, the director; to Jeff Cook, who tracked and helped mix the pre-recorded track for this version of the piece; to Malcolm J. Merriweather and the Dessoff Choirs, who initiated the commission of this piece in honor of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday and to the New Music On The Point Festival, who co-commissioned the piece.

None More Than You is dedicated with deepest love to Meredith Ward, my chavruta and family member.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are she or he for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

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You can hear the Roomful of Teeth and Dessoff Choir version of the piece with me guesting in, by visiting July 1st in A Book of Days. (Meredith’s birthday, not Walt’s!)

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Choruses can perform this piece with the Roomful of Teeth music either live or pre-recorded. Email me for details.

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Another Time

My friend and colleague Lara Downes asked a bunch of us to write small anniversary pieces in celebration of Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday. I took the opportunity to read the Humphrey Burton biography that had been languishing on my shelf for years, and to re-listen to lots of Bernstein, which was simultaneously fascinating, beautiful, and sort of heartbreaking, as time with Lenny often is.

So Another Time is inspired by a few things:

• the octave leap in bar 5 of the melody of Some Other Time (from On the Town). If you haven’t heard Barbra’s incredible live recording, I recommend it with my whole heart:

• Agnes de Mille’s report that LB was fired for dropping in a 5/8 or 7/8 every now and then when accompanying dance classes back in the day,

• the story that West Side Story has a song highlighting each interval (Maria is the tritone, Somewhere the minor 7th, etc.)

So this little piece could be played in 4/4, but I alternate 7/8 and 4/4. The melody fragments cycle through intervals starting with the octave in bar 2, the 7th in bar 5, and so on.

You can listen to Lara’s recording by visiting Lenny’s birthday in A Book of Days.

For performing materials, please click one of the buttons below, with my thanks for your support of this very low-key way of publishing:

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