In this song, the aunt describes her nephew (who has gone missing) to an ace private eye.  The song also needed to contain reference to Greek gods, and the aunt is a Latvian countess.  Again, I can not stress enough that I do not create the plots for these shows:

HE’S AWFULLY TALL
WITH CURLY HAIR
SHAVEN FACE
WITH SKIN SO FAIR
THAT WHEN YOU CARESS IT
YOU FEEL LIKE YOU’RE STROKING A CHILD

HIS CHEST IS BROAD
HIS LEGS ARE LONG
HIS WAIST IS TIGHT
HIS ARMS ARE STRONG
AND WHEN THEY HOLD YOU
THEY MAKE YOUR WHOLE BODY GO WILD

OH HOW HE’S GROWN
FROM A LAD TO A TALL, CHARMING MISTER
AND WHO’D HAVE KNOWN
THAT HE’D BE THE SON OF MY SISTER

HIS EYEBROWS ARE DARK
HIS PUPILS ARE BLACK
THERE’S A LITTLE BROWN MARK
ON THE SMALL OF HIS BACK
AND WHEN YOU BLOW ON IT
YOU’LL SEE HOW HE REALLY GETS RILED

A GOD ON EARTH
AND A NEW GOLDEN AGE IS UPON US
AND SINCE HIS BIRTH
HE’S BEEN OUR FAMILY TREE’S OWN ADONIS

HIS EYES WHEN THEY SMILE
HIS LIPS WHEN THEY KISS
THE LOOK ON HIS FACE
WHEN IT’S BRIMMING WITH BLISS
WELL I’VE TOLD YOU A LOT
BUT THERE’S ONE THING LEFT TO DESCRIBE

‘CAUSE IF YOU HAD SEEN US
YOU’D THINK YOU SHOULD WEAN US
THERE’S SOMETHING BETWEEN US
THAT MAKES ME HIS VENUS

IT’S THE SIZE AND THE STRENGTH
AND THE SHAPE AND THE LENGTH OF HIS
EARLOBE

Mulligan centers around an emotionally stunted 30-year-old loser, John, who can’t get past the fraught relationship he had with his father (now deceased).  He channels his emotions into a “pictorial epic” called Golfing with Apollo – a comic book in which the god Apollo serves as his own heroic alter ego.

Here’s the opening title sequence in which the main character feverishly draws, paints, writes and splatters his ideas onto the page.  There’s some really brilliant animation that goes along with this sequence:

Here’s the “Nostalgia” theme:

And here’s a later comic book scene that deals with reconciliation (hence the reappearance of the Nostalgia music):

There’s a mystery at the center of the plot, as John seeks to uncover the money his father secretly buried where only he (John) could find it, thus proving that he (the father) did love him (John) after all.  I’ll spare you the various “Spooky” cues as they go hunting for the loot and run into a variety of shady characters, but I will include the director’s favorite music, a cue called “Mystery”:

And here’s the composer’s favorite, the “Nostalgia Tarantella”, a delightful romp based on the Nostalgia theme:

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.