to know your love

Choir and electronics | Duration c. 6'

Coming soon from GIA Publications

This experimental work for choir and electronics was commissioned for physically distanced performance by Professor James Jordan and Westminster Williamson Voices during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the virus has consumed our collective consciousness, I often find that my thoughts have turned to my earliest memories and the life that I shared with my family of origin. These early memories largely exist as a collage of fragmented sensory data without a discernible timeline. This piece, to know your love, is a musical representation of that collage, using granular synthesis of sampled glass instruments and music boxes to explore fragments of childhood.

The text that I have provided is a collection of short phrases that simply and directly describe the most prominent of these fragments; “the lake at dawn,” “a shard of glass,” “the voice of mom” – all formative memories that, while seemingly simple and without deeper meaning on their own, were important parts of my early life. Due of the broad concept of this work, this text is entirely replaceable by the singers, the conductor or even the audience: as long as each four-syllable phrase is written in iambic dimeter, short memory fragments of others’ childhoods may be used in place of my own. 

the sound of waves  |  the smell of rain  |  the rapid sky  |  the rising light

a blade of grass  |  a grain of sand  |  a pebbled shore  |  a far-off horn

|the lake at dawn|

the taste of bread  |  a bed of wood  |  a winding stair | a broken bone

a cry of pain  |  a falling face  |  a shard of glass  |  a whispered name

|the voice of mom|

to hold a cat  |  to help a dog  |  to touch the earth  |  to throw a stone

to find a path  |  to laugh at dawn  |  to share a life  |  to know your love

 |to know your love|