Digging into Terra Nostra

(This is an update on my Terra Nostra oratorio project; you can read about its origins in my February 2014 blog post.)

Now that the semester is over and my teaching obligations at Roosevelt University are done until January, I’m digging deep into Terra Nostra, the oratorio I’m composing for the San Francisco Choral Society and Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir. These organizations joint-commissioned me to write an oratorio about our planet. The oratorio consists of three parts: Part I represents the creation of the world; Part II depicts the triumphs of humanity and how our planet is being affected; and Part III contemplates finding a balance between mankind and earth so that we can co-exist. For the past year, I’ve researched texts and assembled them into a libretto, as well as worked on clearing texts still in copyright. Now I’m up to the composing stage – what is the best way to begin?

Sketch from "In the beginning"

First up, I took another hard look at the libretto. I’ve known all along that I collected too many texts for the libretto, and that not everything was going to fit into the piece (part of this was intentional - it was highly unlikely that I would be granted clearance for all texts still under copyright, so I wanted some backups on hand). I read through all of the texts again and began imagining how the text might be set, how many minutes each text would take to be sung, and how much time should be allotted to instrumental interludes. Once I did the math, it was time to start cutting out texts; anything that didn’t match the message I am trying to deliver was taken out. Unfortunately, this meant removing texts by the environmentalist John Muir and poet Carl Sandburg. In exchange, I found a wonderful poem by living poet and agrarian Wendell Berry called The Want of Peace, which will work very well at a crucial moment in Part III. Chances are I’ll still need to cut out a little more text along the way, but I hope not too much more – I like the shape that the libretto is taking.

Next, I started sketching ideas for several movements in Parts I and III. As much as I’d like to write the piece from the beginning straight through to the end, composing isn’t a linear process for me. I need to know what motives, gestures, and progressions will be important in Part III while I’m composing Parts I and II, so I can start to foreshadow and develop these over the course of the entire oratorio. This means that I need to compose some of the music in Part III while working on Part I. There is an additional tie-in for Parts I and III: both Parts conclude with identical text from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. I introduce the material in Part I sung by the children and adult choruses, and will develop it with additional text from Leaves of Grass that will be sung by the four soloists.  So whatever I write for Part I needs to have enough potential to grow into something bigger to end the entire oratorio.

My sketching process involves pencil and paper reductions made at a keyboard, which I then start to flesh out as I enter the material into a computer notation program. At this stage, I’m mostly composing piano reductions, as the choirs and soloists will need those scores from which to rehearse.  Eventually, these will be fleshed out for the orchestra at a later point. 

Sketch from "Of thine own child"

Suffice it to say, I’m making headway on the oratorio. But with a project of this size and scope, thank goodness I have eight months to complete the entire piece! The San Francisco Choral Society is rolling out Terra Nostra in three stages. People in Northern California can catch the premiere of Part I this November 15 and 16 at Calvary Presbyterian in San Francisco (please click here for concert information). Part II will premiere in April 2015, and Parts I, II, and III will be performed as a whole in November 2015. Keep posted for more blog post updates as I get further into the piece!

A perfect short residence in Dallas

With Artistic Director Maria Schleuning
and pre-concert presenter Laurie Shulman

This past weekend, I travelled to Dallas, Texas for a three-day residence with Voices of Change. Currently in its 39th year, the ensemble is dedicated to performing new music, as well as music of the recent past. They have commissioned over twenty-five works, given more than seventy-five world premieres, and released five CDs, one of which was a finalist for a 1999 Grammy Award (classical small ensemble category). They regularly bring in composers from around the country, so I was excited when Artistic Director and violinist Maria Schleuning contacted me and said the ensemble would be featuring me and a few of my works on their series.

My residence involved several components: rehearsals of my Silver Dagger and The Book of American Poetry, Volume III; an outreach program at a local high school involving a performance of one of my works, followed up with a discussion about how I wrote the piece as well as questions from the students; a very spirited pre-concert discussion with Laurie Shulman, the program annotator and pre-concert presenter for the ensemble; and the concert itself. The performers were comprised of many top musicians in Dallas (several are members of the Dallas Symphony and Dallas Opera Orchestra) and were superb. I also met and worked with mezzo-soprano Claire Shackleton, who had an absolutely lovely voice and a theatrical flair to match; she sang my Book of American Poetry beautifully. Our rehearsals went so smoothly that I was able to make several last-minute adjustments to The Book of American Poetry, something you can only do when musicians have the music down cold!

With mezzo-soprano Claire Shackleton

Voices of Change also hosts a great tie-in event for their concerts called SoundBites. Held at Times Ten Cellars, this free event featured wine tastings while patrons listened to clarinetists Jonathan Jones and Jazmin Yuen perform my Stubborn as Hell. We also treated the audience to a short coaching session in which I shaped the piece with the musicians; this provided the audience with a behind-the-scenes look into how a composer operates. Activities like this are a fantastic way to take some of the mystery out of composing for non-musicians – not too much, but enough so they understand why and how we do what we do.

Voices of Change had another special event: three Texas-based composers who won the ensembles’ Young Composers Competition had their pieces performed by Dallas Symphony musicians in an hour-long workshop. I was on hand and offered constructive feedback, as did the musicians. I was also thrilled to meet Fabian Beltran (the first place winner) at this event, as he will be one of our participating composers at Fresh Inc Festival next month for which I’m on faculty along with Fifth House Ensemble and composer Dan Visconti (keep posted for blogs about Fresh Inc next month).

With composer Jack Waldenmaier
and board members Heather Carlile and Harvey Stiegler

Through it all, southern hospitality abounded. On the night I arrived to Dallas, Voices of Change board member Heather Carlile and her husband Jack Waldenmaier graciously threw a dinner party in my honor and invited several local composers and friends.  Board members, musicians, and staff drove me all over town for rehearsals, dinners, and receptions. When I didn’t have time to get supper between back-to-back events on Sunday, Maria brought me a delicious homemade meal. The townspeople were friendly, as were the drivers: at one point, I mistakenly crossed a street against a green light and into oncoming traffic. When I realized my error, I looked up at the driver who was patiently waiting for me to cross…without honking. Perhaps living and working in a major, bustling city has left me a little more jaded than I realized; nonetheless, I was touched by the hospitality I encountered in all aspects of my trip.

Voices of Change has made a strong commitment to the music of living and recent composers, and their residencies with living composers are wonderfully beneficial for both the residents and musicians of Dallas as well as for their featured composers. Anyone who is fortunate to be an invited guest by Voices of Change is in store for a perfect weekend!

Personalizing a Commission

Most of my commissions are from ensembles and organizations, but every now and then, I am commissioned by an individual to compose a piece for someone in their lives. These commissions are often gifts to a parent, partner, or child; sometimes a commission is in tribute to someone who has passed away. All of the commissioners are looking for something meaningful that will relate to their loved one. As I start each new project, I ask myself: what’s the best way I can personalize this commission for its recipient?

I find the best approach is to learn as much as I can about the person. If the piece is a surprise gift, then I have conversations with the commissioner. What issues are important to the recipient? What are his/her passions? Are there any particular events that have been important in his/her life? Some commissioners prefer meeting in person or talking by phone; others write their thoughts via email. If the recipient knows about the commission, then I greatly prefer to have a conversation with the person.

There are a few pieces that I’d like to share that highlight aspects of this process:

In Eleanor’s Words and String Quartet No. 3: Gaia

With Nadine and Tom Hamilton and the Biava Quartet

One morning in 2006, longtime Washington D.C. residents Tom and Nadine Hamilton were reading through the New York Times when they found an article about how anyone can commission a piece of music. Tom’s mother Marget was about to celebrate her 90th birthday; upon reading the article, they decided to commission a piece for Marget in honor of this momentous occasion. One thing led to another, and Tom and Nadine eventually got connected to me (it worked out quite well – Tom attended Roosevelt University, where I’m on faculty). Tom, Nadine, and I decided on Eleanor Roosevelt as the focus of the composition because of Marget’s lifelong commitment to social issues. The resulting piece, In Eleanor’s Words for mezzo-soprano and piano, featured six movements, each with text chosen from Mrs. Roosevelt’s My Day newspaper column that ran from 1935-1962. Mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott and pianist Amy Briggs premiered the piece at Roosevelt University in a private event for the Hamilton family and guests around the time of Marget’s 91st birthday.

In 2007, Tom contacted me again; this time, he wanted a piece for Nadine.  He also intended for the piece be a complete surprise.  I asked Tom to write up a description of Nadine. What I took away from Tom’s essay was a strong-willed, loving wife with a great sense of humor and who embraced life to its fullest, particularly in light of the fact that she was a cancer survivor. I chose Gaia as the topic, as Mother Earth represents these qualities to me. To link Nadine in a more direct manner to the music, I took the “a” and “d” from Nadine’s name and made this into a rising perfect 4th motive that spans the entire quartet. While the Hamiltons weren’t able to make the Biava Quartet’s premiere of String Quartet No. 3: Gaia in Moscow, Idaho in January 2009, they flew out to Chicago for its second performance at the Norton Building Concert Series in Lockport, Illinois later that year.

String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations

With Susan and Nicholas Yasillo and the Cecilia Quartet

Nicholas Yasillo, who runs the Norton Building Concert Series, featured the Biava Quartet in that performance of String Quartet No. 3. Nick liked the idea of a personal commission so much that he commissioned me to compose a piece to celebrate an anniversary with his wife Susan. Nick informed Susan about the commission early in the process, so I asked if they’d both meet me for lunch.  Susan filled me in about her various interests and activities, but when she began describing her fondness for Books of Hours (Medieval prayer books commissioned by wealthy laypeople that contained “illuminated” plates of biblical scenes), her face completely lit up.  By the end of lunch, it was clear to me that the piece needed to be about Books of Hours.  I purchased a $30 replica of Catherine of Cleves’ Book of Hours, which was one of the books Susan has studied, and found five “illuminated” plates that intrigued me. I composed the piece using Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition as a model: there is a “book” motif that the audience hears when the quartet starts the piece and is interspersed among musical representations of the five plates. The Cecilia String Quartet premiered String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations for Susan and Nick at the Norton Building Concert Series in September 2011.

Sanctuary

With Barbara Garrop and the Lincoln Trio

The most recent was a commission from my mother, Barbara Garrop. She attended a performance of String Quartet No. 4: Illuminations given by the Avalon Quartet, and loved the idea of a personal commission. She commissioned me to write a piano trio in memory of my father, who passed away a little over thirty years ago. This project proved to be the most challenging.  How do you write a piece to depict someone who has been gone for so long? I can’t ask him about his passions and interests; my own memories of my father are scattered and dim with age. So I gathered together old pictures, letters, and objects that had belonged to him, as well as talked at great length with my mother. I also tried searching the web for additional clues about his life, but as he died right on the cusp of our current computer age, there was very little material online to mark his existence. Ultimately, the piece became about the search itself; the first movement (Without) presents a young child searching everywhere for her lost parent, whom she finds in the second movement (Within) within the sanctuary of her own heart. The Lincoln Trio premiered Sanctuary in November 2013 with lots of family in attendance, including my mother and sister.

As these personal commissions have significant meaning for the commissioners, I carry the commissioners’ involvement further than just the commission itself. I ask all to write the dedication line for the first page of the score. Some of these commissioners get artistic with this: Nick Yasillo quoted a line from a poem of Robert Browning, whereas my mother chose a line from a Shakespeare sonnet. I also occasionally ask the commissioners if they can help with the crafting of the piece’s program note. Susan Yasillo wrote a significant portion of String Quartet No. 4’s program note, with wonderful descriptions of the five illuminated plates as well as the historical background of Books of Hours. Tom Hamilton, who recently commissioned me to write a voice and piano piece when Nadine passed away, wrote a beautiful tribute to his wife that we used as program notes for the premiere performances (to read his tribute, click here to go to my website, then open the header called Dirge without Music). 

Personalizing a commission is a very rewarding experience, not only for the commissioners, but for myself as well. I love being able to give something unique to the recipients of commissions, and hopefully the piece will be something that they’ll want to hear again and again. In the case of Sanctuary, the piece had an unexpected benefit of helping me to gain some closure on the loss of my father, something I hadn’t realized I needed until I started composing the piece.

Composers ♥ Saxophonists

With the Mosaic Quartet after their impromptu
performance of my Flight of Icarus

Amidst the many centuries’ worth of string quartets, piano works, and orchestral symphonies, there is a particular instrument family whose repertoire pales in comparison: the saxophone. Adolph Sax invented the saxophone family in the early 1840s. The saxophone rose to prominence in the 1920s with the advent of jazz; since then, more and more composers (both jazz and classical) are adding to the repertoire.  Still, the saxophone repertoire as we currently know it is young when measured against repertoire already written for other instrumental genres.  

This should make composers salivate. Not only is there a smaller body of repertoire for saxophonists to peruse, they also typically welcome new works. This was clearly evident to me when I attended the 2014 North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana in late March. University of Illinois saxophone faculty members Debra Richtmeyer and J. Michael Holmes put together a three-and-a-half day extravaganza that presented more than 350 saxophonists (!) as well as a wide range of musicians (pianists, clarinetists, percussionists, singers, harpists, etc.) and composers, with performances featuring a little of everything imaginable: solo saxophone works, duos for saxophone plus another instrument, saxophone and electronics, saxophone quartets and octets, and large saxophone ensembles. Everyone had opportunities to shine, from college-age students and mid-career professionals to the most established musicians in the field. I flipped through the convention program book and counted an astounding 80 world premieres of new works over the course of the convention. A few were arrangements of pre-existing pieces, but the majority were completely new compositions. Dominating the rest of the programmed repertoire was music by living or recent composers as well. New music is alive and kicking among saxophonists, and composers everywhere should take note!

I was there to peddle my new saxophone quartet Flight of Icarus, commissioned by the Capitol Quartet. I suspect a lot of composers were there to promote their works too. And why not? How often can you find hundreds of saxophones in a single geographic location, hear them play their hearts out, and meet them face-to-face? Genre-specific conventions like NASA are a composer’s heaven, and I strongly advocate for attending any conventions that a composer can, whether they have a piece scheduled for performance or not. I also find it advantageous to wander freely throughout the conference instead of renting a table in the exhibition area. If you’re manning a table, you are dependent on performers finding you (and you’ll need to pay to be an exhibitor), whereas if you roam, you can hear performances, introduce yourself to performers, and hand out business cards, scores, and CDs. As it turned out, my roaming method paid off: Mosaic Quartet, a student group from Arizona State University at Tempe, had been working on my Flight of Icarus. One of the quartet members spotted me at the conference and asked if I’d listen to the group play my piece. A few hours later, Mosaic Quartet gave an impromptu performance of my piece in one of the rehearsal spaces, which we followed up with a coaching session. This was a wonderful bonus for both the quartet members as well as myself, and perfectly played into a day of networking and music-making.

Besides NASA, many other musical organizations hold conventions as well. A quick web search turned up conventions offered by the National Flute Association, International Society of Bassists, Midwest Band Clinic, American Choral Directors Association, National Association of Teachers of Singing, Chorus America, International Double Reed Society, and the League of American Orchestras (I bet there's more). Additionally, Chamber Music America is an excellent service organization for chamber ensembles of all shapes and sizes; they have an annual conference every January in New York City that highlights both ensembles and living composers. Composers, check out what conferences are coming to your town or close by, see what repertoire you have that is suitable for the conference, register, and get ready to unabashedly promote yourself!

Collaborative Composing with a Music Enthusiast

With Bonnie McGrath and our pencil sketch
of Bruce's Theme.

Last fall, James Ginsburg (the president of Cedille Records) asked if I’d be willing to offer a composition lesson as an auction item for a Cedille Records benefit event. The purpose of the lesson would be to help someone with presumably minimal musical training to compose a short piece of music. I’d done something similar a few years ago; as part of a residence with the Albany Symphony, I helped forty middle school students write short musical numbers for an oratorio about Henry Hudson. I hadn't tried this with an adult before. Helping a donor compose a short piece in a single composing session was an intriguing idea, so I readily agreed to Jim’s request. Jim listed the composition lesson in the auction, and Bonnie McGrath was the winning bidder. Bonnie is an award-winning journalist, columnist, blogger, and lawyer. She also has a deep and enthusiastic appreciation for music; we are constantly running into each other at various events around Chicago. 

Bonnie and I met for two hours in early December. After mulling over various instrumental possibilities, we agreed on composing a piece for piano. Then we got down to business. As Bonnie experienced firsthand, the basis of composing is to choose a concept for the piece, then make a series of decisions that support this concept. Bonnie wanted to write a piece for her fiancé Bruce, who enjoys the music of Philip Glass. We sat down at the piano, and I played several Glass-like musical gestures until Bonnie heard one that she liked. We had our concept; now we had to figure out what to do with it. I played through several possible harmonic progressions until Bonnie found one especially appealing, and we made this the basis of the entire work. We then experimented with melodic shape, various accompaniments, and phrasing. We also explored how to build tension, when to relax that tension, and what role dynamics and range play in the context of the piece as a whole. We ended our composition by using material found earlier in the piece to give the piece greater cohesion. Finally, we made sure that everything we wrote down would be playable by Bonnie herself. Over the course of the two hours, Bonnie decided that not only would she would dedicate the piece to her fiancé, but that she would also premiere the piece for him herself.

After our meeting, I entered the piece into a music notation program (we had used pencil and paper during our composing session) and gave Bonnie several bound copies along with our pencil and paper sketch. I also gave her a CD recording of the piece played by my husband, pianist Joe Francavilla, so that she could study his performance as she learned it (to listen to Joe’s recording, click here).  After much hard work and secretive practicing, Bonnie gave the premiere of Bruce’s Theme on Valentine’s Day for a very surprised and happy Bruce.

Writing a piece with someone not familiar with the composing process was just as fascinating for me as it was for Bonnie. She learned about the various musical parameters that go into creating a new piece, as well as the vast number of decisions a composer makes to shape every aspect of a piece. I was surprised to learn just how many choices I make at every step in the composition process, even in a one-minute piece! It was refreshing to see this process through someone else’s eyes. This was a mutually beneficial and fun collaboration for both Bonnie and me. On a personal note, I was thrilled to be a part of such a unique experience for Bonnie, and happy that she took this opportunity to turn the entire adventure into something very meaningful in her life. 

Rehearsal Technique for Composers

One of the most neglected topics at music schools, and one which is paramount to building a successful career as a composer, is rehearsal technique. It is difficult to teach; professors don’t usually attend their students’ rehearsals prior to school recitals, nor do they usually demonstrate rehearsal technique in a seminar for composition students. Most composers ultimately learn through trial and error.

Composer Dan Visconti and I tackled this topic last summer at Fresh Inc Festival, where we’re both on faculty along with Fifth House Ensemble. We devised a skit, which Dan christened “Goofus and Gallant” in homage of the cartoon characters from the children’s magazine Highlights whose purpose was to overtly model good and bad social behaviors. Like Goofus and Gallant, Dan (Goofus) and I (Gallant) presented three mock rehearsal scenes along with the help of members of Fifth House Ensemble. I ran the skit again for the students in my Chicago College of Performing Arts Composition Program (this time, I played both Goofus and Gallant) along with the assistance of Gaudete Brass Quintet. From these two sessions, as well as from numerous observations I’ve made over the years of a broad range of composers’ social interactions in rehearsal situations, I have devised a list of things composers should consider when rehearsing with musicians.  While some of the items might seem obvious, I’ve seen enough rehearsals in which they were not to warrant listing them below.

The Dos and Don’ts

Be early to rehearsal in case the musicians have questions on their parts; if you’ve not yet met some (or all) of the performers beforehand and your piece is for chamber ensemble or smaller, then personally greet each performer. Use people’s names instead of calling them by the name of their instrument. Be warm and attentive; bring your score (yes, some people actually go to rehearsals without one) as well as a pad of paper to take notes as you listen on spots that you’d like to check. Find out from the musicians when they’d like feedback from you, as some groups might want to run the entire piece prior to hearing your thoughts, while others might want to intermix smaller sections and feedback. When they’re ready for your comments, let the performers know what you’re really happy with, along with the spots you’d like to address.

Be ready to help the performers get back on course if they’re getting hung up on a spot. One of the most painful rehearsals I sat through involved musicians who were having rhythmic issues on a passage while the composer sat impassively watching them, not offering any feedback on where or how they were getting off track. In addition to burning up valuable rehearsal time, the composer came across as disengaged from the musicians. I’m all for waiting to see if an ensemble can make corrections on their own – I tend to wait on speaking up about anything until I hear the performer repeat the mistake again, as they usually self-correct upon another run-through – but there’s a limit to how long a composer should wait before offering some constructive feedback to solve the problem.

Additionally, it never helps a composer’s cause if you ignore your performers, if you’re rude to them or insult their playing, if you invade their personal space to try to point something out on their score, or if you start screaming at them. Always stay professional and keep your cool. You never know which performers you’re working with today will become frequent collaborators in the future.

Working with a Conductor

Think of a conductor like the skinny part of an hourglass: you’re on one side, and the ensemble is on the other. All interactions go through the conductor, as he/she is the person in control of the rehearsal, not you. So if a musician asks a question during the rehearsal, let the conductor answer; otherwise, he might view this as a challenge to his authority. I always talk with a conductor in advance of any rehearsal to find out when he would like feedback from me. Many conductors will want to run the piece first and then turn to you for comments; some will want to get through the entire rehearsal and receive feedback from you afterward. 

Giving the Performers Space

Performers need time to run through the piece and woodshed challenging spots without the composer present. I also like to give them time to make their own interpretation of my piece. Student composers tend to be responsible for finding performers, as well as organizing and running all rehearsals, but professional composers who are working with pre-formed ensembles should let the performers have time to rehearse first. I never come to an early rehearsal of any work unless the performers request for me to do so; I usually hear the last rehearsal or two, and that’s it.

To wrap up this post, I offer one more piece of advice: thank your musicians at the end of rehearsals. Thank them after the performance, too; post-concert appreciation can be expressed by a handwritten note or email, chocolates or another tasty snack, etc. These small gestures (which are independent of any formal payment you or an organization is making) go a long way in letting performers know how much you value their time and skills in helping bring your music to life.

Listening is linear. Composing isn’t.

In a typical live concert, audience members experience a piece of music as a linear event. There’s no going back to listen to an earlier spot, no lingering over a particularly catchy chord. My experience as a composer is quite different. Over the course of my career, I’ve perhaps composed two or three pieces in which I sat down at a piano and wrote the work from one end to the other without stopping. It is far more common for me to work on multiple sections simultaneously, skipping back and forth throughout the piece as I work. 

This approach works well for me for several reasons. First, it allows for musical ideas that occur throughout an entire piece to be developed at more or less the same time. I can introduce a brief version of a motive early in the piece; I can grow it throughout the main body; I can use it triumphantly at the high point, and then bring it back as a whimper in the finals notes of the piece.  For a work with a longer duration, I am able to develop multiple movements at once that share some aspect of a motive. For instance, in the large-scale oratorio that I’m currently writing, I am finding it useful to work on ideas for multiple movements of the piece simultaneously. This allows me to devise a few main motives that will be used in a variety of ways throughout the entire oratorio. This approach is also helpful if I get stuck on a particular spot – I can jump to another part of the piece and keep working.

The key to a non-linear approach is staying flexible. I tend to initially work with pencil and paper and eventually switch over to a computer once my sketches are detailed enough. With pencil and paper, it is easy to not get too attached to anything I put down, as the score at this stage usually looks like a hot mess, with musical ideas scribbled all over the place. But with a good computer notation program, you can be seduced into thinking you're much closer to a final product than you really are, as the music looks so neatly engraved on the screen and sounds like music when you hit the playback button. I avoid the siren call of the computer for as long as I can; when I finally switch over to notating within Sibelius, I don’t get too committed to any music I put into the program until much further into the process.

Another key is to think organically. When I write a musical idea that constitutes the opening of a piece, I try to simplify it. Does the piece really begin four to eight measures earlier than I think it does? Perhaps even sixteen measures before my current point of entry? The same organic approach applies to the climax of a piece. Sometimes I’ve worked on building material into a high point for so long that I think the section lasts much longer than it actually does (it is hard to listen with fresh, objective ears). I also find that once I reach a high point, I can experiment to see if the music can momentarily stabilize and withstand one more organic push to reach an even higher point than I first imagined. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, has this approach down extremely well. When she gets to a structural high point of her story, instead of peaking and letting the tension fall away, she turns the high point into a plateau to which she adds more material that climbs to yet another high point. 

Sometimes, after working out of order for most of a piece’s construction, I find it surprising to finally hear it in order at the piece’s premiere. After a while, my ears adjust, and then I can’t hear the piece any other way.

Beginning Terra Nostra: An Oratorio

I am currently working on a project two and a half years in the making, and it is the largest undertaking of my career.  In September of 2011, Robert Geary (the conductor of the San Francisco Choral Society, Volti, and the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir) asked if I were to compose an oratorio, what would it be about?  At the time, Bob and I were at the Volti Choral Institute for High School Singers in Occidental, California.  Students from four local high schools were gathered together for a fun weekend of singing alongside choristers from Volti; they were rehearsing one of my Millay sonnet sets that the combined choruses would perform a month or so later in a concert in San Francisco.  Perhaps it was because we were surrounded by gorgeous redwood trees in the middle of wilderness, or maybe because I had recently composed a string quartet based on Gaia (the personification of the earth in Greek mythology) and felt that I had more to say on that subject—whatever the reason, by the end of our three day institute, I pitched to Bob the basic concept of an oratorio in three parts that celebrates the planet, the rise of humanity, and the search for a balance between the earth and mankind.  He liked it, and I sent him a fleshed-out formal proposal after the institute.  It took about a year from that point to be approved by the San Francisco Choral Society and a commissioning contract to be formulated; the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir also came aboard as joint commissioners.  By January 2013, all of the paperwork was in place, and I was green-lighted to commence the project.

The size of the oratorio will be physically big.  I am scoring it for four soloists, the San Francisco Choral Society, one of the choirs in the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir, string orchestra, piano, and three percussionists.  It is also big in duration, containing three parts that will be approximately 20 minutes each for a total duration of an hour.  The parts will receive staggered premieres, with the first part premiering in November 2014, the second part in April 2015, and all three combined parts in November 2015. 

Additionally, the oratorio is big in scope, involving approximately 22 texts.  I searched a diverse variety of writings for about eight months, and crafted the libretto from a wide range of sources and writers: creation myths from four continents, a passage from the Book of Genesis, verses about the European Industrial Age, writings by John Muir and Walt Whitman, and poetry by Lord Alfred Tennyson, William Woodsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Carl Sandburg, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Edna St. Vincent Millay among others.  Some of the passages I use will be short excerpts, some will be set in full; some might not survive the composing process and be left out.  At the moment, I am still waiting for permission on two copyrighted texts.  I will dedicate a future blog to the topic of copyright permissions; for now, suffice it to say that it can be a long, multi-month process that requires a lot of patience.  I have not been successful in securing all of the texts that I wanted, but in my months and months of researching texts, I discovered several poems that can take the place of my first choices if need be.

So here I am, two and a half years after Bob’s and my first conversation.  I’m starting to put notes on score paper for part 1.  Bob and the San Francisco Choral Society are firming up details on their end, such as choosing soloists (it will be useful to know the singers’ ranges as I compose), what percussion instruments will be available (another detail that will impact my composing), and where the performances will take place.  The scores for part 1 will be due in late summer, with deadlines for the second and third parts spaced out over the next year.  I’ll periodically return to writing posts about the oratorio, from its composing process to the rehearsal stages and premiere performances.

Am I nervous?  Heck yeah!  And excited too.  This is the biggest opportunity I’ve had thus far in my career, and I intend to enjoy every moment of it.