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The conclusion of a fantastic residence with CUSO ❤️

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I have had a wonderful second year of my residence with the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra! In my first year, I focused almost exclusively on offering a wide assortment of activities for education programs. These brought me to multiple elementary, middle, and high schools, colleges, and several organizations to work with students and adults of all ages. We also ran a chamber ensemble concert at the i-Hotel featuring CUSO musicians, as well as an Overture Composition Competition for regional composers.

For my second and final year with the orchestra, I kept some of the elements of the first year, while also diversifying in new directions. CUSO’s overarching theme for this season was “Our World, Our Music,” to tie in with the focus of various works of mine about our planet earth.

We brought my chamber music to old, new, and unexpected locations around the region.

  • We started off the new concert season with a “Messages from Gaia” Concert at the i-Hotel in Champaign, IL. This concert featured several of my earth-themed chamber works, performed by musicians from the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra and two guest singers. Along with my String Quartet No. 3: Gaia and Phoenix Rising for solo flute, we performed two arias from Terra Nostra, my oratorio about the planet, as a teaser of our March 9, 2019 concert. We live-streamed the concert so people around the country could watch. Audience members took part in CUSO’s “Messages to Gaia” community project, creating artwork, writing poetry, and leaving messages on large pieces of butcher paper that we then featured at CUSO’s Terra Nostra concert in March 2019.

 

  • We held a Gelato Social at the Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery in Champaign, IL, featuring free homemade gelato from the farm’s goats, accompanied by performances of my String Quartet No. 3: Gaia and Phoenix Rising played by musicians from the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra. PFFC co-owner Wes Jerrell spoke about how he and Leslie Cooperband started raising goats in 2004, which led to their interest in making cheese and gelato. He also spoke about their farm’s sustainability efforts. Audience members also took part in CUSO’s “Messages to Gaia” community project.

 

  • CUSO flutist Amanda Pond performed my Phoenix Rising in a number of locations. In addition to playing the piece at the i-Hotel concert and the Gelato Social, she performed it at the Urbana Farmers Market in September 2018, as well as part of our pre-concert events in Foellinger Great Hall of the Krannert Center for CUSO’s March 9, 2019 Terra Nostra concert.

 

 

I did a lot of mentoring:

  • I designed and implemented two visits to meet with incarcerated participants of the Education Justice Project at the Danville Correctional Center in Danville, IL. For the first visit, I gave a workshop on how to unleash one’s inner creativity. We did this by discussing the decision-making process a composer goes through when composing, learning musical terms and how a composer tracks the tension within a piece, and analyzing some music together; we also created our own piece using graphic notation that we performed and then critiqued. On my second visit, I constructed a concert using a pre-recorded CD of my earth-themed works (recorded from our i-Hotel concert earlier in the month). Between these musical movements, I inserted ten texts about the planet from the libretto of Terra Nostra, my oratorio, which were read aloud by the incarcerated participants. A few of the participants in my earlier workshop shared creative projects as well during the concert. We concluded with O World, a group composition that we created together based on the four elements (earth, air, water, and fire), followed by a Q&A session with the participants in which they asked a range of questions about the music they heard and my composing process. Participants also took part in CUSO’s “Messages to Gaia” community project.

 

  • I designed a two-day Composers Institute for composers that lived within a 200-mile radius of Champaign-Urbana. Twelve composers from eight Midwest universities joined us at the i-Hotel. We crammed a lot into our Institute! The first day focused on my “Craft Your Career” workshop series in which we covered strategies for composing, building an online presence, and music business basics. On the second day, we held an assortment of activities: CUSO harpist Molly Madden and CUSO percussionists William Moersch  and Ricardo Flores gave demonstrations on how to effectively write for their instruments within an orchestra setting; we had lunch with Maestro Alltop in which we discussed navigating the conductor-composer relationship; and we had a fantastic reading session of three new works by Midwest composers Stephen Caldwell, Brian Hinkley, and Hunter Chang, workshopped by Maestro Alltop and the orchestra. Each of these three composers took part in a brief Q&A with me prior to the reading of their piece, as well as in a longer Q&A with our audience at the conclusion of the reading session. We live-streamed the reading session so people around the country could watch.
  • Prior to the Composers Institute, I mentored our three selected composers for the Institute via Skype on how to prepare their full scores and parts for the reading session. I also mentored a fourth composer who we ultimately didn’t select, but whose music exhibited great promise.

 

  • In the Spring of 2018, Maestro Alltop, CUSO, and I held an Overture Composition Competition, in which we selected five 3-minute overtures from an open competition, written by composers of all ages who lived within a 200-mile radius of Champaign-Urbana. We held a reading session in which the five works were workshopped by the orchestra in front of an audience, then the audience and orchestra voted on whose pieces they’d like to be performed on a CUSO subscription concert. The winners were Maya Benyas’ Fantasy House Overture and Roger Zare’s Strontium Red. Over the course of 2018/19, I mentored Maya Benyas in preparing her full score and parts for the upcoming performance. Both Maya’s and Roger’s works received performances by Maestro Alltop and the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra on April 27, 2019 in Foellinger Great Hall of the Krannert Center.

 

I visited a few more organizations.

  • At the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI), I took part in CUSO’s longstanding tradition of pre-concert talks for the organization. Prior to CUSO’s performances of Krakatoa and Terra Nostra, I introduced each work to OLLI members in Friday morning talks.

 

  • Also at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, I gave a 90-minute talk called “How does a composer compose instrumental music?” This was a follow-up to a presentation I gave in the Spring of 2018, in which I addressed how a composer composes vocal music. I built these presentations so that people with no musical training can get a very accessible glimpse into a composer’s writing process. Both of these talks were received very well, and I have started to give these presentations elsewhere in the U.S. for general audiences.

 

  • In the Fall of 2018, I gave two presentations at Urbana High School on how a composer composes choir music. I returned in the Spring of 2019 to give presentations on strategies for composing music for two music classes at Urbana High School.

 

The most exciting part was hearing CUSO perform my orchestral works!

 

  • The biggest performance of my entire CUSO residence was that of Terra Nostra, my oratorio about the planet, and how we can live in balance with it. The whole final year of my residence built up to this March 2019 concert, and it was very exciting! Members of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra were joined onstage by the soloists Sarah Gartshore, Betany Coffland, Stephen Soph, and David Govertson, the University of Illinois Oratorio Society (Andrew Megill, conductor), and the Central Illinois Children’s Chorus (Andrea Solya, conductor), with Maestro Stephen Alltop leading the joint forces. We started the evening with a pre-concert event, featuring CUSO flutist Amanda Pond playing my Phoenix Rising; then Maestro Alltop and I had a conversation in which we introduced the 3-part structure of Terra Nostra to the audience. We also highlighted various texts and particular moments of the piece for which the audience should listen. Then, we performed Terra Nostra – the piece is 71 minutes and done without an intermission. Immediately after the performance, we had a talk-back featuring the conductors, soloists, and myself, in which we answered questions from the audience. To round out the concert experience, we handed out seed packets to the audience (this gesture ties in with the oratorio’s messages of humanity being stewards of the earth). Also, CUSO Guild Board’s Vice President Anne Sharpe beautifully designed two large display panels to feature all of the artwork and messages people created in our “Messages to Gaia” community project that we have held throughout the year at various events noted above.

 

Throughout it all, I blogged.

 

Thank you, Champaign-Urbana and Music Alive Program!!

Thank you so much to everyone that has played a role in my residence – Executive Director Gerri Kirchner, Maestro Stephen Alltop, the musicians of the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, photographer/videographer Darrell Hoemann, Anne and David Sharpe, Rebecca Ginsburg of the Danville Correctional Center’s Education Justice Project, Wes Jerrell and Leslie Cooperband of Prairie Fruits Farm & Creamery, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and all of the Champaign-Urbana community members and volunteers — you have all greatly enriched my residence experience throughout the past two years. Thank you as well to the Music Alive Program, funded by New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras, for funding the residence. Without these organizations, I wouldn’t have had this wonderful opportunity to learn and grow as a composer and mentor.

It has been a joy to bring music and the discovery of composing to people of all ages and from all walks of life. I hope all of the activities we carried out over the course of the past two years have inspired people to be creative in any manner that speaks to them, be it making music, gardening in the backyard, singing in a community chorus, or painting artwork in the park.

And with this, my residence ends. Champaign-Urbana, you will always hold a dear place in my heart. ❤️

Recap of CUSO’s March 9th Terra Nostra Performance

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On Saturday, March 9th, the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra held a concert that will forever hold a special place in my heart. The combined forces of CUSO, the University of Illinois Oratorio Society (Andrew Megill, conductor), Central Illinois Children’s Chorus (Andrea Solya, conductor), and soloists Sarah Gartshore, Betany Coffland, Steven Soph, and David Govertson performed my oratorio Terra Nostra. This was the work’s second performance and its Midwest premiere. All of the singers, choristers, and musicians performed together under the baton of Maestro Stephen Alltop to give a fantastic, poignant performance that was the highlight of my Music Alive Program residence activities.

Pre-Concert Event

We started the evening with a pre-concert event, featuring CUSO flutist Amanda Pond playing my Phoenix Rising. This is one of the pieces we featured in our Gaia-inspired chamber concerts this past fall (see below), and it was a wonderful tie-in to bring Amanda in to perform it prior to Terra Nostra. She sounded magical in Foellinger Great Hall, where the remarkable acoustics of the space added a beautiful reverberance to her performance.

Next, Maestro Alltop and I had a conversation in which we introduced the 3-part structure of Terra Nostra to the audience. We also highlighted various texts and particular moments of the piece for which the audience should listen.

The Concert

Baritone David Govertson (left) and tenor Steven Soph (right) singing “Earth Screaming.”

I composed my 74-minute oratorio to be performed without intermission. So once the concert began, the singers, choristers, and musicians dug in, and Maestro Alltop kept his baton up until the last chord finished reverberating around Foellinger Great Hall. The performance went so smoothly, and Alltop kept everything moving right along with minimal breaks between movements, that they shaved a few minutes off the duration of the oratorio!

The most common thought that ran through my head throughout the concert was how much I couldn’t believe my ears – to hear a piece like this for this first time since its world premiere four years ago, and to hear it performed with such beauty and power – it was heavenly.

Post-Concert Talk-Back

Immediately after the performance, we had a talk-back with the audience. Maestro Alltop, Maestro Megill, the four soloists, and I answered questions asked by inquisitive audience members; we also talked about the preparation and rehearsal process of putting on a work of this size and scope.

Additionally, CUSO Executive Director Gerri Kirchner and I rounded out the Terra Nostra experience with a few extra features:

Seed Packets

I wanted to have a memento of seed packets for audience members to take as they left the concert. For me, this gesture encompasses the oratorio’s message: as we came from the earth and will return to it, let’s remember that we are all stewards of the earth who can help replenish its beauty and resources for generations to come. An enthusiastic retired gardener kindly donated the seed packets and wicker baskets; audience members enjoyed selecting from a mix of flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

“Messages to Gaia” Art & Poetry Project

Earlier in the season, CUSO held two Gaia-themed chamber concerts, one at the i-Hotel and the other at the Prairie Fruits Farm and Creamery, in which Amanda Pond and the CUSO string principals performed a few of my earth-themed chamber works. The i-Hotel concert also featured two arias from Terra Nostra, sung by soprano Josefien Stoppelenburg and baritone Ryan de Ryke. At these events, we invited the audience to take part in our “Messages to Gaia” community project by drawing pictures, penning poetry, and writing short messages to the planet on pieces of butcher paper.

We also ran the “Messages to Gaia” project at the Danville Correctional Center (a medium-security men’s prison located in Danville, IL). At the DCC, I held a Terra Nostra – themed concert for the incarcerated participants of the prison’s Education Justice Project. The concert consisted of participants reading texts taken from the oratorio’s libretto (Walt Whitman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Wendell Berry among others) interspersed with recordings of music from the i-Hotel event, the sharing of creative projects made by EJP participants, and a group composition that we wrote on-the-spot and performed together based on the four elements of nature. Throughout our concert, EJP members were invited to come to a table where they could leave their artwork, poetry, and messages on large poster boards.

With the help of CUSO Guild Board’s Vice President Anne Sharpe and my mother Barbara Garrop, the three of us cut out the artwork, poetry, and messages from all of the butcher paper and poster boards, then affixed these on two large display panels that Anne expertly designed. These beautiful panels were placed right outside the entrance to Foellinger Great Hall for people to peruse as they entered and left the concert. Audience members also utilized the panels as a backdrop for selfies.

A Mezzo-Soprano Surprise

Mezzo-soprano Betany Coffland (left) and soprano Sarah Gartshore (right) singing “Binsey Poplars”.

One more detail made this concert particularly special: six days prior to the performance, Maestro Alltop found out that our originally contracted mezzo-soprano was ill and had to pull out of the concert. What could have been a very tough situation to find a replacement in such a short time turned out to be a blessing. When he called me with the news, I immediately gave Alltop the contact information for Betany Coffland, the mezzo-soprano who sang in the world premiere performances of the piece in San Francisco back in 2014/15. Remarkably, Betany was able to rearrange her schedule, get re-acquainted with the piece, hop on a plane to the Midwest, and join us for all of the rehearsals and performance. I fell in love with Betany’s rich, exquisite voice at the oratorio’s world premiere four years ago, and I was so thrilled and touched that she moved heaven and earth to be with us for our performance. Thank you so much for joining us, Betany – I am forever grateful.

Thank you all!

The concert was a deeply moving experience. I’m so thankful for each and every person who took part in performance and who worked behind the scenes to carry off the performance and all of its related events. You all brought such grace, beauty, and passion to my oratorio, and I’m forever grateful. ❤️ My heartfelt thanks as well to the Music Alive Program, sponsored by New Music USA and the League of American Orchestras, for funding my residence and making the performance of Terra Nostra possible.

The Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra’s Terra Nostra concert on March 9th made for a picture-perfect ending to my 3-year residence with the orchestra. While I’m officially in residence for a few more months, this was my last on-site trip to the Champaign-Urbana region, and I will finish up the final details of the residence remotely.

From left to right: Sarah Gartshore, Stephen Alltop, David Govertson, Stacy Garrop, Steven Soph, Betany Coffland, Andrew Megill.

 

Terra Nostra, Post #7: Program Notes

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CUSO will be joined by the University of Illinois Oratorio Society, Central Illinois Children’s Chorus, and soloists Sarah Gartshore, Betany Coffland, Steven Soph, and David Govertson to give the Midwest premiere of my TERRA NOSTRA on Saturday, March 9th in Foellinger Great Hall.

Photo by Chloris Floral.

Terra Nostra focuses on the relationship between our planet and mankind, how this relationship has shifted over time, and how we can re-establish a harmonious balance. The oratorio is divided into three parts:

Part I: Creation of the World 

Part I celebrates the birth and beauty of our planet. The oratorio begins with creation myths from India, North America, and Egypt that are integrated into the opening lines of Genesis from the Old Testament. The music surges forth from these creation stories into God’s World by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which describes the world in exuberant and vivid detail. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s On thine own child praises Mother Earth for her role bringing forth all life, while Walt Whitman sings a love song to the planet in Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth! Part I ends with A Blade of Grass in which Whitman muses how our planet has been spinning in the heavens for a very long time.

Part II: The Rise of Humanity 

Part II examines the achievements of mankind, particularly since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s Locksley Hall sets an auspicious tone that mankind is on the verge of great discoveries. This is followed in short order by Charles Mackay’s Railways 1846, William Ernest Henley’s A Song of Speed, and John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s High Flight, each of which celebrates a new milestone in technological achievement. In Binsey Poplars, Gerard Manley Hopkins takes note of the effect that these advances are having on the planet, with trees being brought down and landscapes forever changed. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s A Dirge concludes Part II with a warning that the planet is beginning to sound a grave alarm.

 Part III: Searching for Balance 

Photo by Chloris Floral.

Part III questions how we can create more awareness for our planet’s plight, re-establish a deeper connection to it, and find a balance for living within our planet’s resources. Three texts continue the earth’s plea that ended the previous section: Lord Byron’s Darkness speaks of a natural disaster (a volcano) that has blotted out the sun from humanity and the panic that ensues; contemporary poet Esther Iverem’s Earth Screaming gives voice to the modern issues of our changing climate; and William Woodsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us warns us that we are almost out of time to change our course. Contemporary/agrarian poet Wendell Berry’s The Want of Peace speaks to us at the climax of the oratorio, reminding us that we can find harmony with the planet if we choose to live more simply, and to recall that we ourselves came from the earth. Two Walt Whitman texts (A Child said, What is the grass? and There was a child went forth every day) echo Berry’s thoughts, reminding us that we are of the earth, as is everything that we see on our planet. The oratorio concludes with a reprise of Whitman’s A Blade of Grass from Part I, this time interspersed with an additional Whitman text that sublimely states, “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love…”

My hope in writing this oratorio is to invite audience members to consider how we interact with our planet, and what we can each personally do to keep the planet going for future generations. We are the only stewards Earth has; what can we each do to leave her in better shape than we found her?

Terra Nostra was commissioned by the San Francisco Choral Society and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. These groups premiered the piece under the baton of Maestro Robert Geary in November 2015.

Terra Nostra, Post #6: Finishing the Oratorio

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CUSO will be joined by the University of Illinois Oratorio Society, Central Illinois Children’s Chorus, and soloists Sarah Gartshore, Betany Coffland, Steven Soph, and David Govertson to give the Midwest premiere of my TERRA NOSTRA on Saturday, March 9th in Foellinger Great Hall.

When I originally wrote the oratorio in 2014-2015, I wrote a series of blog posts about its creation process. I will be re-posting these here in the days leading up to CUSO’s performance, so that audiences can read about its creation process. 

Originally posted on June 23, 2015 on www.composerinklings.com

In an earlier blog post, I compared composing the middle movement of an oratorio to watching the middle movie of a trilogy. While the purpose of middle-of-trilogies is to build suspense, the final movie is where the big payoffs happen. Will Neo find a way to free the entire human race from the Matrix? Can Frodo destroy the One Ring before its evil power corrupts him and Sauron kills his friends? How will Marty McFly get back to 1985 when he is stuck in 1955 without a time machine?

The goal of final movie of trilogies is clear: tie up all loose ends, and provide a satisfying conclusion not just for the 3rd movie, but for the previous two movies as well. Filmmakers take different approaches to end trilogies. Some go for a grandiose finish (Neo and his fellow humans battle the Matrix on multiple fronts); some offer emotional reconciliations (Darth Vader saves the live of his son, Luke); and some show characters that have been affected by their journey for better (Marty McFly transcends his aversion to being called chicken) or worse (Frodo must leave the Shire forever). As I gathered my texts together to create my oratorio, a big question loomed: how did I want to conclude the work?

I took a cue from The Matrix franchise in which the dramatic conclusion for the first movie was re-used for the third movie, but executed on a much grander scale. I knew that I wanted to have both Parts I and III of Terra Nostra conclude with identical text and music, taken from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and sung by the adult and children’s choruses:

A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars.
Long and long has the grass been growing,
Long and long has the rain been falling,
Long has the globe been rolling round.

I chose this text for a particular reason. The point of the entire oratorio is that humanity can choose to change how we live so that we lessen our impact on the planet, possibly even live in harmony with it. In Part I, when the only texts sung thus far are celebrating the birth and beauty of the earth, Whitman’s text is a reassuring confirmation of the unending cyclical nature of our planet. But by the end of Part III, when we have heard texts that recount humanity’s dramatic impact on the world, Whitman’s text seems to suggest that our planet’s situation is tenuous. As a result, I added additional lines of text from Leaves of Grass, sung by four soloists, that urge humanity to find a solution for this fragile situation by reconnecting with the earth from which we came. The soloists’ text is set to new, hymn-like music that is inserted in between the choirs’ lines of text. If we can meet Whitman’s challenge, we might find redemption for ourselves and for our planet:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

When a movie trilogy is over, good has triumphed over evil, love interests are reconciled, and brave hearts have proven their worth. I hope the message of my oratorio will lead to a similar outcome in having humanity find a balance in living with terra nostra, our earth.

Terra Nostra, Post #5: Five Musical Inspirations

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CUSO will be joined by the University of Illinois Oratorio Society, Central Illinois Children’s Chorus, and soloists Sarah Gartshore, Betany Coffland, Steven Soph, and David Govertson to give the Midwest premiere of my TERRA NOSTRA on Saturday, March 9th in Foellinger Great Hall.

When I originally wrote the oratorio in 2014-2015, I wrote a series of blog posts about its creation process. I will be re-posting these here in the days leading up to CUSO’s performance, so that audiences can read about its creation process. 

Originally posted on November 14, 2014 on www.composerinklings.com

Whenever I start a new piece, I listen to a LOT of music. Sometimes I drown my ears in the music of baroque composers like Bach and Handel, sometimes in folk-inspired artists like Mumford & Sons or Joan Baez – I’ll listen to anything that strikes my fancy as a source of inspiration. Ultimately, I start to hone my listening list down to pieces that have similar forces and scope as the piece I’m about to compose. As I brainstormed about the type of music to compose for Terra Nostra, I went big. Terra Nostra is my oratorio for adult and children’s choirs, four soloists, and orchestra, so I studied works that were comparable in some manner to my project. Here are the top five inspirations that I studied throughout the composing of my oratorio:

1. Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth – cover recorded by Martin Gore (originally composed by the rock band Sparks)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLciI-4AkKo

Okay, this song is the opposite of an oratorio with only a duration of three minutes and the performing forces consisting of a singer and his band. But this little golden nugget is what got me thinking about writing a piece about our planet in the first place. In 2008, I was commissioned to write a new string quartet. During my brainstorming phase for the quartet, I coincidentally happened to be listening to Gore’s rendition of the song while watching an intense thunderstorm outside my window. Gore’s hauntingly beautiful voice, along with the song’s lyrics and raging storm, gave me the distinct impression that I was listening to a cautionary tale about the dangers of not paying attention to our planet. I wrote the string quartet about Gaia (the Greek personification of the planet) but felt my work on the subject wasn’t done. When the San Francisco Choral Society asked what I’d like to write an oratorio about, I knew exactly what the topic would be.

2. Elijah – Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsSeWuH4mkk

This is the first oratorio I ever sang when as an undergraduate student, and it has remained a personal favorite. Written for four soloists, chorus, and orchestra, it times out around two and a quarter hours. Yet it never feels that long to me – how easily the music flows from one section to another! Mendelssohn masterfully controlled the pacing of his story of the prophet Elijah so that it just flies by. There is a particularly well-paced sequence in which Elijah repeatedly instructs the prophets of Baal to have their god prove his existence; as the prophets get more desperate to summon their god, so does the music until it reaches a feverish pitch that is only answered by silence. Mendelssohn tempers these wonderful moments of high drama with several sweet songs (Lift Thine Eyes, for instance); he is also mindful to employ a four-chord motif repeatedly throughout the entire oratorio that draws everything together.

3. Mass – Leonard Bernstein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a4naYEHUZs

At some point during my early graduate days, I encountered an LP of Bernstein’s Mass at a garage sale. When I brought it home and put it on the record player, I was stunned by what I heard. What is this melting pot of musical styles (rock, jazz, blues, folks, gospel, contemporary classical, etc.) folded around the story of a Celebrant who is trying to lead an unruly congregation through a traditional Roman Catholic Mass service that goes horribly awry? How had I never heard of this piece before?? This two-hour, semi-staged theatrical work for soloists, adult and boy choirs, dancers, pit orchestra, and onstage instrumentalists was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Bernstein had a thing for treading on fine lines that others might leave untouched (just look at Candide), but I had never seen anyone take it to this extreme. As the Celebrant keeps leading the Mass service, the congregants get more and more rowdy. The piece comes to a powerful peak when the Celebrant finally breaks down and smashes the altar. What follows next is an incredible fourteen-minute musical monologue that revisits many of the piece’s musical themes. In a particularly poignant moment of the monologue, the Celebrant segues from the word “Adonai” (Hebrew for God) into “I don’t know.” While this isn’t Bernstein’s finest work, his handling of the structure of the Mass, along with the pacing of its destruction, is very well done. He also repurposes material from the opening song (“A Simple Song”) at the very end (“Secret Songs”), which effectively bookend the piece.

4. Carmina Burana – Carl Orff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdIpoE2LEps

It is hard to beat “O Fortuna” when one is looking at how to craft raw, pounding energy. Orff scored the piece for large forces – three soloists, choir, and a big orchestra – which made this entire piece essential listening. In addition to studying “O Fortuna,” which Orff used as the both the first and final movements, there are a number of more delicate movements throughout this hour long piece that explore a good deal of orchestration and color.

5. Dona Nobis Pacem – Ralph Vaughan Williams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zfHiloldtg

I originally began listening to Dona Nobis Pacem because the premiere of the first section of my oratorio was paired up with this work on the San Francisco Choral Society’s concert. But the more I delved into the piece, the more I fell in love with it. Scored for soprano and baritone soloists, choir, and orchestra, this approximately 35 minute piece is Vaughan Williams’ emotional response to war. Vaughan Williams created his libretto from excerpts of the Roman Catholic Mass, Bible, and poetic works of Walt Whitman and John Bright. Since I was compiling my own libretto for Terra Nostra, I was very interested in what texts he selected to create an overarching narrative. Another interesting aspect of the piece involves the soprano – she only sings the Latin texts that frame the opening and closing of the cantata, as well as at a climactic moment in the piece. I didn’t end up using the idea of a singular role for a soloist in my oratorio, but will consider it in future compositions.

Ultimately, I studied a wide array of musical elements in these works: the overall dramatic story, the pacing of the music, the lengths of instrumental interludes, and how the soloists, choir, and orchestra forces were balanced with each other. These five works, along with several others, helped me to make decisions on how to structure and shape Terra Nostra into its final form.

Terra Nostra, Post #4: What do movies and oratorios have in common?

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CUSO will be joined by the University of Illinois Oratorio Society, Central Illinois Children’s Chorus, and soloists Sarah Gartshore, Betany Coffland, Steven Soph, and David Govertson to give the Midwest premiere of my TERRA NOSTRA on Saturday, March 9th in Foellinger Great Hall.

When I originally wrote the oratorio in 2014-2015, I wrote a series of blog posts about its creation process. I will be re-posting these here in the days leading up to CUSO’s performance, so that audiences can read about its creation process. 

Originally posted on October 4, 2014 on www.composerinklings.com

Writing the middle third of my oratorio reminds me of the middle movies of trilogies. The Empire Strikes Back, Back to the Future II, The Matrix Reloaded – I remember watching each of these in a movie theater, enjoying the ride and leaving the theater filled with excitement to see the final chapter. Middle-of-trilogy movies focus on developing the story line while also providing enough tantalizing plot twists to make an audience want to return. This is usually achieved by a major revelation or cliffhanger near the end of the movie, something that will sustain an audience goer through the long months before they can watch the final installment and achieve a sense of closure. In short, these movies build anticipation. Darth Vader is Luke’s father? Dr. Emmet Brown (i.e. Doc) has accidentally transported himself back to the Old West? Neo is just part of the Matrix’s programming to keep the humans under control? Nooo! These mysteries pique the audience’s curiosity, leaving audiences hungering to know how it all resolves.

I considered plot development and use of anticipation while composing Part II: The Rise of Humanity of Terra Nostra, my oratorio-in-progress. In Part I: The Creation of the World, I set texts that explore the birth and beauty of our planet. In Part II, I chose poetry that celebrates mankind’s industrial advances (the invention of the steam engine, automobile, and airplane) while at the same time noting the impact these are taking on the planet. The texts regarding industrial progress are joined together into a single movement that comprises the first half of Part II. This music is very joyful, rhythmic, and mechanical, with the tenor and baritones soloists frequently interspersing with the chorus. The latter music in Part II, however, turns quite dark. The soprano and alto soloists sing a duet to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “Binsey Poplars” about a beautiful landscape that is being demolished for industrial needs. In this hushed movement, the soloists are accompanied by strings that mournfully slide between their pitches to represent grief for the planet (here is an excerpt):

When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,
Sweet especial rural scene.

Part II concludes with the chorus and soloists singing “A Dirge” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The text depicts a world that is out of kilter:

Rough wind, that moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main,—
Wail, for the world’s wrong!

To accompany these words, I crafted restless, creepy-sounding music filled with moaning sounds, ominous trills, and instruments that play out of sync with each other. The music becomes increasingly unstable as I build tension to a chaotic climax, after which the music quickly drops to a whimper and dies out.

As in movies, I present a plot development in Part II: The Rise of Humanity that is not resolved until Part III: Searching for Balance. Mankind is taking its toll on the earth and its resources; what can be done and where do we go from here? If I’ve done my job right, audiences will come back to hear the conclusion of the oratorio.

Part I: The Creation of the World premieres November 15th and 16th in San Francisco with Maestro Robert Geary, San Francisco Choral Society, Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, and soloists. Part II: The Rise of Humanity premieres in April 2015, and the oratorio will premiere in its entirety in November 2015. For tickets and further information, please visit the San Francisco Choral Society’s webpage.