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.

horizontal rule

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.

DETAILS

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.

horizontal rule

You can hear a live recording of the piece by visiting visiting July 1st in A Book of Days. (Meredith’s birthday, not Walt’s!)

horizontal rule

When the day comes that singing in groups is possible again, choruses can perform this piece with the Roomful of Teeth music either live or pre-recorded. Email me for details.

DETAILS

Ascension

Ascension was written for a production of Part II of Goethe’s Faust, called Faust 2.0 and premiered by Mabou Mines in New York in 2019. The lyricist Matthew Maguire generously agreed to focus on the lines from the Magnificat and the Beatitudes that talk about turning the world upside down — the idea being that those lines manifest the revelation embodied in what we call “feminine energy.”

I am not enough of a Goethe person to be able to say if we successfully mirrored Goethe’s vision, but I really like what Matthew came up with, and really loved writing the music for this lyric.

My broken one, my wayward Faust,
You were the proud one
No more, no more.
You were the mighty one
No more, no more.

I scatter the proud
And topple the mighty
from their thrones

The one who strives will always stray,
So you, the greatest striver,
Became the greatest sinner
Seduced by power’s dark embrace
You turned away from grace

Blessed are the humble,
for they shall inherit the earth.

Broken you finally feel
Blind you finally see
That’s the miracle of Love’s sacrifice
And that is why, my Beloved one
I’m calling you to Paradise

I scatter the proud
And topple the mighty

Blessed are the humble,
for they shall inherit…

The wonderful Andrea Jones Sojola, who played Mary in the Mabou Mines production, recorded a version of the piece that you can hear by visiting August 15th in A Book of Days.

horizontal rule

If you would like to perform the piece yourself, please click the paypal link below, and we will send you the score and the backing track needed to perform the piece. The charge for the piece is normally $25, but in these pandemic days, I’ve set it to pay-as-you-like, with thanks for supporting this low-key way of publishing:

 

DETAILS