VocalEssence Chorus & Ensemble Singers

World Premiere;

An Essentially Choral World Premiere, commissioned by VocalEssence and American Composers Forum with support from the Jerome Foundation

John Berryman’s poem “Sole watchman of the flying stars” is a private, earnest confession.

My reaction to the poem resulted in a more complex compositional and harmonic language, in my attempt to musically express all of the complex emotions and themes touched upon in the poem.

For this part of the commission I had wanted to write my first piece for double choir; this idea grew into the concept that the first choir (in six parts) would present most of the poem, representing the “prayer of the individual,” and the second choir (in four parts) would represent a broader “prayer of humanity.” The subject matter of the poem is expressed as a highly personal struggle (choir one) with broadly human frailties and flaws (choir two). Musically, this is achieved by having the second choir amorphously chant sections of the text at the beginning of the piece, providing a sort of harmonic “background chatter,” as if millions of similar individual prayers were being prayed by people of many faiths, all over the world.

The more direct presentation of the text in choir one is usually sung in the form of a three-part contrapuntal melody, representing the inner conflicts of the individual, and like many of my recent works, heavily influenced by Renaissance choral stylings. The background chanting

in the second choir eventually becomes more intelligible until it fully joins with the first choir toward the end of the piece (“unite my various soul”), representing the universal nature of humanity’s struggles.

- Matthew Brown