Just to Sing from Leann Schuering on Vimeo.

Cantata for SATB choir, Soprano and Mezzo-Soprano soloists, Brass Quintet, Timpani, English Handbell Choir, and Organ

I wrote this piece on a commission from the Union Church of Hinsdale, IL to celebrate the retirement of their long time Director of Music (and my one time boss), Michael Surratt.

Mike is a great guy and a really great organist, so I wanted to give him something to bite into.  The church suggested I set the text of Psalm 46 (as one of Mike’s favorites) and I seized the opportunity to use a translation that has fascinated me for years, namely, Young’s Literal Translation of 1862 (which you can read about on Wikipedia.)  What makes this this version of the bible so truly unique is that Mr. Young, a self-educated Scotsman, translated from the Ancient Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek without rendering said languages grammatically into Modern English.  Strangely though, he still uses the vocabularic style and tense endings of the King James Version, lending the text a very distinct flavor of the ancient and the modern.

For comparison, here is the New Revised Version of Psalm 46:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;

Though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with its tumult. Selah.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.

God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved; God will help it when the morning dawns.

The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter; He utters his voice, the earth melts.

The LORD of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah

Come, behold the works of the LORD; See what desolations he has brought on the earth

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth; He breaks the bow, and shatters the spear; He burns the shields with fire.

“Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth.”

The LORD of hosts is with us; The God of Jacob is our refuge.  Selah.

And here is Young’s Literal Translation:

God [is] to us a refuge and strength, a help in adversities found most surely.

Therefore we fear not in the changing of earth, and in the slipping of mountains into the heart of the seas.

Roar — troubled are its waters, mountains they shake in its pride. Selah.

A river — its rivulets rejoice the city of God, Thy holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.

God [is] in her midst — she is not moved, God doth help her at the turn of the morn!

Troubled have been nations, moved have been kingdoms, He hath given forth with His voice, earth melteth.

Jehovah of Hosts [is] with us, a tower for us [is] the God of Jacob. Selah.

Come ye, see the works of Jehovah, who hath done astonishing things in the earth,

Causing wars to cease, unto the end of the earth, the bow he shivereth, and the spear He hath cut asunder, chariots he doth burn with fire.

Desist, and know that I [am] God, I am exalted among nations, I am exalted in the earth.

Jehovah of hosts [is] with us, a tower for us [is] the God of Jacob! Selah.

I made just a few tiny adjustments to this text, mainly for musical purposes, and also because of Mike’s aversion to the use of the masculine pronoun for God.  The piece was premiered in Hinsdale, IL in May of 2011, and I recorded it in Cincinnati, OH in December of the same year using funds from a Kickstarter campaign (which I discuss here.)

Astute listeners may recognize two hymn tunes which are quoted extensively (and often hidden) in the piece: “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and “O God Our Help In Ages Past”.  Both are paraphrases of the Psalm 46 text and favorites of Mike’s.

p.s. the woman who originally sang this song was Welsh.  That’s really no excuse for my singing it with any accent other than my own American one, but when the shoe fits…

FIONA:

Follow your heart, be brave and be bold,
Live for your art, I wish I’d been told.
There’s one life to live and the one there to live it is you.

The road that’s been tried is never as true,
The path that’s uphill is the one to pursue,
The end might be further, but Sadie, just think of the view.
So follow your heart and I promise you’ll know what to do.

SADIE:

Grandpa’s aloof and afraid, but secure,
Mother once glimmered, but now she’s obscure,
And grandma’s advice seems so sage and so pure,
So I’ll have to forge my path.

I’ll follow my heart, etc…

A pork-pie hat
I’ve got one of those!
A bump on a log
I could find that!
A laboratory rat – oh! –
And the toilet where he sat – ugh! –
And a perspicacious insight on a blog.
Oh come on, that doesn’t even exist!

A Welsh nun’s habit
Why, there’s one in my closet!
Some live New Hampshire Mooses
Mooses? It’s ‘Meese’!
Hum a tune by Milton Babbitt,
Eat a prune with pickled rabbit,
Which is lovely if you dab it in its juices.

REFRAIN:

Yes, we’ll persist on this list
And we really must insist
That we not just get the gist or the brunt.
There’s no point to resist
So enlist and assist
‘Cause how could we exist without a hunt?

A brassiere – ooh! – from Zaïre – ugh! -
Which I fear, we must be clear
Isn’t worth a point if its clasping joint is unlinked.

A chronology of astrology
With a catalogue of terminology
Which you’ll enhance with a dance where each stance
Takes a clear position on the superstition -
Be it haughty, naughty, thoughty,
Brainy, grainy, zany,
Easy, breezy, sleazy -
Please-y, be succinct.

Oh perfect! – What? – That was my junior thesis!

REFRAIN

A pork-pie hat that’s made of real pork,
A bump on a frog on a log that’s a stump,
A soap-box sports-car, a Snow White dwarf star,
A minor key cantata on a chicken enchilada,
It’s so insane and so inane to wrack a brain just to obtain
The many items on this list.

And if we grunt, it’s no affront – it’s quite a stunt that we confront
And to be blunt, we can’t exist
Without a hunt!

Here’s my crack at the genre:

Hey there,
You at the bar,
Pour me another… one of these
‘Cause I’m in the mood to remember
The night when my man went away.

Well, I guess you’d have called him a drifter,
He just drifted right into my heart,
There was never much to him,
No good to pursue him
So why then did I ever start?

Hey there, so how ‘bout that drink?
I’ve got another verse to sing
About a cool autumn night in September,
The night when I first met my man,

He was a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel,
But I had so little to lose,
I thought I could right him, refine, and delight him,
The night when I first hatched my plan.

Oh how I tried so to keep him from trouble,
But I couldn’t keep trouble from him,
‘Cause when trouble’s a mind to, it always will find you,
Like the night when I first met my man.

Well, I guess you’ve have called him a bastard,
Well I guess I’d have called him one too.
But when you’ve tried hard to hone him,
You feel like you own him,
And love is the cost that’s come due.

And on the night when he finally left me,
The law picked him up in a fray,
So that was his way out, and I lost my payout,
The night when my man went away.

So I’ll think of him when I feel lonely,
And I’ll think of him when I feel blue,
But I’ll never regret that I once cast a bet on
The best damned man I ever knew.

Hey there,
The sun’s comin’ up.
It’s gonna be a bright and fine day.
But oh, how the moon was an ember,
The night when my man went away.

In 2010, members of the Presbyterian Church of Barrington, IL, commissioned me to write a hymn for the church’s 50th anniversary.  I relished this opportunity, both as a chance to give back to a place that was very special to me, and also just because I really wanted to write a hymn.

Writing a hymn is a tricky little thing – you’ve got to come up with something that is singable by a large body of untrained singers but that isn’t so bland you can’t remember it.  The music has to relate to the text of the several verses but still encapsulate the overall theme.  Plus, there’s an enormous body of literature that you’re competing with and being inspired by.

There’s also a huge body of repertoire, namely hymns written since 1960, to actively despise because of its saccharine popiness.  I tried to write a hymn that had something of the grandeur of 19th century English hymnery, Southern Baptist languor and maybe even a touch of popiness (anybody who’s heard my music before knows I just can’t help myself in that regard.)

The text was written by the pastor of the church, the Rev. Dr. Curtis Baxter.

My second foray into the world of electronic music is decidedly unelectronic, more just a low-tech remix of some examples of my favorite genre, film noir.  I tried to create a sort of collage-fantasy of the themes in these movies, a distillation of the central tropes of 1940′s grisled Hollywood cinema.

The source material comes from 4 films:

• Suddenly (1954) starring Frank Sinatra (a major boon for a huge Sinatraphile like me, I can use his voice in my piece because this film is in the public domain), in which he plays a deranged assassin out to kill the president.  Download
• The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) starring Barbara Stanwyck (my favorite Hollywood actress of all time), Lizabeth Scott and Kirk Douglas, is the story of a complicated love triangle (rectangle), power, deceit and secrets.  Download
• Scarlett Street (1945) directed by Fritz Lang and starring Edward G. Robinson, is a sultry tale about petty con artists taking a sensitive, demure painter for a ride.  Download
• The Second Woman (1950) a melodramatic story of a man who was responsible for his first wife’s death and how enacts his guilt in increasingly destructive ways.  Interestingly, the entire score consists of arrangements and re-orchestrations of music by Tchaikovsky.  Download

My take on the ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, this is a sort of electronic étude, my first attempt in the medium of “electronic music”.  Electronic music has a lot going for it: namely, the fact that one doesn’t really have to deal with other people in order to make one’s music.  Not that I’m a curmudgeon or anything.  In this case, however, I had a really great time recording the harp parts with Haley Rhodeside.

Speaking of which, in this piece, Eurydice is represented by the chorus and Orpheus by the harp.  The piece opens with the door to hell closing on Eurydice and her mangled voice disappearing into the netherworld.  We then transition to an outdoor scene, complete with a “babbling brook” in which little fairies alert Orpheus to the disappearance of Eurydice.  Orpheus then descends into the underworld (in my version, the descent is via a sort of industrial metal staircase).  As he descends, he hears the hellish cries of the deceased, which become louder and louder.

The underworld turns out to be a sort of hellish dance club (which maybe says more about me than anything else).  Having found Eurydice, Orpheus ascends the stairs whence he came.  His heart fills with excitement and growing anticipation.  He reaches the top of the staircase and turns around, only to see Eurydice plummet back into the underworld as the door shuts down on her.

Some girls have mothers who drag them to soccer games
Hooting and howling, galore,
Then there are others who thrust their girls on the stage,
And wait in the wings as their ingénue sings,
And then rush them out the stage door.

Oh how nice it would be
If my mom would do that to me,
But rather than preening, routinging, and primping,
My mother sees me as ripe for the pimping.
So how’s a plain maiden, maternally laiden,
Expected to act like a whore?

Mother you are dreaming,
Mother, I am screaming,
Men at banks will guarantee
That they don’t want a girl like me.

Mother I am trying,
But Mother, I am dying,
How I wish that you could see
The lure you want is just not me.

This is a single-movement work in a genre that is sort of starting to define a large part of my output – let’s call it a “psychological tone poem”.  The idea is that there is a narrative program behind the music, but the music occasionally forays into areas beyond the possibilities of traditional narrative (as music is wont to do).  I suppose it’s sort of my spin on a Lynchian mode of story-telling, although I would argue that composers of art music have been doing this sort of thing for centuries.

I imagine this particular piece taking place in Northern Italy around 1600.  A noble family entertains themselves by singing a madrigal at the home.  The deranged son of this family becomes obsessed with the plot of this madrigal, in which a beautiful young princess is courted by a prince from far off but ends up dying at the hands of fate (or something… isn’t that basically what happens in all of these madrigals?)  One of the singing family members (the top soprano, no less) bears a strong resemblance to the beautiful princess in the madrigal story.  This is rather unfortunate for her, because the story of the madrigal becomes all to real in the mind of her demented young relative, who kills her in order to fulfill the story’s ending.  The natural harmonic playing of the horn is a major element of the piece, representing the deranged offspring and providing the opening horn calls as the murder is chased through the woods.

I wrote this piece on commission from a highly virtuosic chamber ensemble, the Gaudete Brass Quintet.  Unfortunately, the fact that this group does most of its concertizing in educational and church settings means that my piece hasn’t, uh, exactly fit into their programming schedule as of yet (which is probably for the best as far as their audiences are concerned).  Luckily, I had the chance to premiere and record the piece with a splendid group of students during the summer of ’10 at the Pierre Monteux School in Hancock, ME.  A special shout-out goes to the very able Mirella Gable, a horn student at Eastman for tackling this wicked and bizarre part!