In all the years I spent dreaming about being a published composer, I never had more than the vaguest notion of what that would mean, apart from the thrill of seeing my name on the cover of a “real” piece of music that one could see in a catalog or buy in a music store. As it turns out, the greatest joy and sense of satisfaction in all this is in knowing that my music matters to people I don’t even know- and that it is helping me to forge new relationships and friendships that very likely would not otherwise have come to be.
In this Christmas season, this has happened several times over. I blogged on December 8th about the happy experience of visiting Southland Lutheran High School to hear their top choir sing “Great & Glorious Light” – and about a week later, I almost got to hear a community chorus in Milwaukee sing the same pieces (I had tickets). . . but ended up staying home to nurse my horrible cold. And last night, I attended the annual Christmas Alumni Concert at Christian Life School in Kenosha to hear their top choir’s very earnest performance of “G & G L” – and was touched that they would take the trouble to acknowledge my presence in the audience both before and after the piece was sung. (The problem is that such treatment makes it harder to live by the motto of Soli Deo Gloria – “To God Alone be the Glory” – but as problems go, that’s a pretty nice one to have.) And by the way, it was such a fun and unexpected bonus to get to see my former student David Duncan, a Christian Life alum who was participating in the concert as a singer, saxophone player and even as a guest conductor on the song right before “Great & Glorious Light.” He sang my piece with the Carthage Choir last year, and it was nice to have him up on those risers with his big, booming bass voice.
I spent yesterday forging new relationships over a piece of music that had absolutely nothing to do with the season of Christmas or with either of the pieces that just got published. Waterford High School (located about 45 minutes away from Racine) has a fine choral program directed by Derek Machan, a talented conductor who used to teach part-time at Tremper High School in Kenosha (I’m not sure if that was before Polly’s arrival there or not, but they may have briefly overlapped.) Derek approached me sometime last year with the invitation to compose a requiem mass setting for his choirs, to be performed in early January 2013. The work was to be dedicated to Kris Novaeus, the choir director at Union Grove High School (right down the road from Waterford) who died a year ago October when she and her husband (also a teacher) were killed in a tragic motorcycle accident. Derek and Kris were good friends and frequent musical collaborators, and there has always been a commendable sense of mutual respect between the two programs. (When I came to rehearse with the Union Grove choir for their teacher’s funeral – for which they sang two pieces- the first time I cried was when I read the huge card that was hanging on the wall of the UG choir room – a card signed by dozens and dozens of Waterford choir students and which included some truly touching individual expressions of sympathy. Although I did not recognize one single name, I knew this was a special group of special young people.)
And now, as it turns out, I have composed a piece of music for this same choir! It’s not a full-length Requiem (it was impossible for me to find the time for that) but rather what I’m calling a Short Requiem. . . a setting of the Requiem, Kyrie, Pie Jesu and In Paradisum texts. It is really unlike anything I have ever composed before – and maybe the scariest or most unsettling experience I’ve had as a composer thus far – but it seems like it turned out okay. Derek has been a good collaborator, with a few respectful suggestions and/or requests along the way, but otherwise receiving my efforts with appreciative enthusiasm. The one interesting rub is that he asked me to write a clarinet part for the work – and then as the piece took final form, he kept nudging me to write more and more for the clarinet. It was only yesterday while the two of us were talking to one of his choirs that he mentioned to them that Kris Noveas, in addition to being a fine conductor and pianist, was also a clarinetist. And then I realized that Derek had told me about that very early in the progress, but it had slipped my mind. So it was great to be reminded of the reason for what was starting to seem like his strange preoccupation with the clarinet! And by the way, I’m glad that he pushed me like he did; the clarinet part adds immeasurably to the piece!
I spent all day Monday at Waterford High School, listening to each and every one of the choirs – from his mixed choir at 7:35 to a group of underclassmen guys in the last period of the day- sing my Short Requiem. With each group, I would just listen as Mr. Machan led them through the piece, start to finish, and then I would step in to answer any questions they might have about the piece and give them a few suggestions on how they could improve on the fine job they were already doing. A couple of the women’s groups during the middle of the day had just seen the piece for the first time a couple days earlier, while most of the other groups had been working on it for awhile- but in every single case, they seemed to be taking the work seriously and enjoying it – or at least enjoying it as much as any high school singer is going to “enjoy” singing a Requiem. As for the questions, they ranged from “why does the piece begin in minor” to “where did you get your tie” – but I’m glad to say that I was only asked one question like the latter; all of the other questions were intelligent and many were quite insightful. That was positively thrilling for me because it showed that they had thought about the work beyond just the nuts and bolts of the notes. And fortunately, I had halfway intelligent answers for every question posed to me.
It turns out that Mr. Machan has done a fair amount of work with guest composers/arrangers, so his singers have had the experience of meeting composers and arrangers before – and I would not have been thunderstruck if some of them had treated my presence there with a shrug and a yawn. But in fact his singers seemed genuinely glad that I was there, and I was quite impressed with their focus and seriousness. I also appreciated the fact that several of the women’s ensembles I listened to through the course of the day were covering just one or two voice parts (maybe I alto and II soprano), and so were working on the piece without really getting a chance to hear it in all of its fullness- yet persevering all the same. That was pretty humbling to see.
I don’t remember at what point Mr. Machan said that my day was going to be ending with his underclassman men – and he also told me that I was going to be impressed by them. And as it turns out, that wasn’t even the half of it! These young men were absolutely terrific both in how strongly and expressively they sang as well as in the number and the quality of the questions they asked and the comments they made. (Of all the groups all day long, no one asked more questions or better questions than these guys did.) A couple of them paid me heartwarming compliments about the piece, and another young man said something to the effect that – “with all due respect to the other composers who have visited us before, I really like that there is a reason why you did the things you did.” And it’s true- there is. Most of the piece is in the time signature of 5-4, which feels a little strange- almost like someone is walking with a limp. And isn’t that the way it often feels when we are first dealing with an unexpected heartache? Like something is wrong or “off” with the world and nothing feels quite right for quite some time? For another part of the piece with the text “et lux perpetua…” (“let perpetual light shine”) I explained how their vocal part – which is fairly tricky- was supposed to sound a little like someone trying to start a fire, with the first attempts just set off brief sparks before a full-blown fire begins to burn. I took the guys thru that and other details in describing what one of the students described as the journey from grief to healing which the work embodies, and it felt like they were hanging on my every word. That was actually sort of scary, I suppose- but mostly thrilling and touching. And afterwards I even got to share a word or two with a couple of the guys who have dabbled in composition themselves, which was great fun.
Of course, it was already an uncommon sort of day because of the tragic events from last Friday . . . and in fact, the school day in Waterford began (as I’m sure it did for a lot of other schools across the country) with a few moments of silence to honor the victims of Friday’s rampage. There is something profoundly moving and impressive when a room full of the hustle and bustle of energetic students is suddenly completely silent, with not a single extraneous sound ruining the moment. I was so touched by that. And with each and every group, I explained how just the night before (Sunday night) I had added some clarinet parts to the Pie Jesu movement that were meant to honor those who died in Friday’s shooting. And then I played those moments to see if they could recognize what songs I was quoting. One is “Jesus loves me” and the other is “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world.” (Each is disguised ever so slightly.) And then I recounted to them the touching story of teacher Kaitlin Roig, who hid the students of her classroom in a small bathroom until help could arrive- and who took a few moments to tell those students that she loved them, because if their lives were about to end, she didn’t want them to end without them hearing one more time that they were loved. This moment in my Small Requiem is in honor of that- and as I told that story to each and every group, all day long, not once did I see a student staring off in the distance or yawning or otherwise disconnected. Every one of them seemed to appreciate the gravity of the moment and the importance of what I was sharing with them. And for as much as I appreciated their fine singing, all day long, I think I appreciated their attention and their sensitivity even more. And it helped me know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when they finally perform my Small Requiem next month in memory of Mr. & Mrs. Novaeus, Terry Lawler (a long-time Kenosha teacher and dear friend of Derek Machan) and the victims of the Newtown,CT shooting, they will be singing with all of their heart and soul.
No composer could ask for more.
Pictured above: These are the underclassmen guys in Mr. Machan’s program. Thanks to them, my great day in Waterford ended on an amazing high. By the way, I am probably spoiled for life by my frequent visits to and collaboration with Polly’s choirs at Tremper. She does such spectacular work there musically but also works so hard to make sure that her singers are not only good singers . . . but good people as well. And they are – and almost without fail, whenever I visit another high school or have the chance to work with a high school choir from some other school, I am always at least a little bit (and sometimes very much) disappointed by the conduct of the kids, or by their attitude, which unfailingly falls short of the Tremper standard of excellence in such matters. So the fact that the singers at Waterford impressed me as much as they did says a lot.