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Programme Note

Digital perusal score available from ScoresOnDemand

Premiere:
7 May 2009
Joyce DiDonato, mezzo-soprano
Russell Braun, baritone
New York Choral Artists
New York Philharmonic
Alan Gilbert, conductor
New York, NY

Movements:
• Prelude
  (orchestral)
• 1. I Live My Life in Widening Circles
  Text: Rilke
  SATB chorus
• 2. Owl Woman's Song
  Text: Juana Maxwell
  Mz
• 3. That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection
  Text: G.M.Hopkins
  Bar
• 4. From The Odes of Solomon
  Mz, SATB chorus
• 5. Excerpts from Rumi and Mechtild of Magdebur
  Mz, Bar, SATB chorus
• Prelude — The Great Sea...
  Text: Uvanuk
  Mz
• 6. Oceana
  Text: Neruda
  Mz, Bar
• Prelude
  Text: Marguerite Porete
  SATB chorus
• 7. From Leaves of Grass
  Text: Whitman
  Bar
• 8. Prayers from the Navajo
  Mz, Bar, SATB chorus

Composer note:
In general I like writing to texts very much. In fact, most of what I've written in recent years has been vocal music. It has opened up a new world for me. I've always loved poetry. I wanted to be a writer when I was younger, but then music took over. The style in which I write now has been very affected by being with Lorraine [Hunt Lieberson] and hearing her sing, and realizing one has to give weight to words. Very often, my tempi would be faster than those she sang in performance, [with her] needing time to enunciate words, and also to give expression to the emotions contained in the words. ... I sometimes think that composers write at a faster tempo than [a piece] is performed [at]. What takes place in the mind is a different thing from what is articulated by performers.
I am always a little worried about calling a musical piece spiritual or religious. Rather than being so concerned about writing a piece that is spiritual or religious, which one might think one must listen to in a certain way, with this piece I set texts that are the utterances of a fully developed human being. We are in a very intolerant age. The less space we have to live in, it seems the less tolerance we have; the way points of view are expressed in language seem more important than the essence that is expressed.

— Peter Lieberson