Music and the Personal: some musings on an upcoming premiere

In a speech at the Aspen Festival in 1964, composer Benjamin Britten said of his music “I believe in roots, in associations, in backgrounds, in personal relationships.” This statement has always been meaningful to me. My own musical impulses are grounded in the same belief; the most memorable and best musical moments of my life have been ones with deep connection to people I love; my greatest musical collaborations have been ones forged alongside friendship.

There is no musical expression more intimate than a song. My love of songs has always been intertwined with my appreciation of poetry, learned from my mother, also a lover and writer of words. During my childhood, my mother pursued graduate work in the English department of Kansas State University, where she subsequently taught, and she wrote a fair bit of poetry during those years.  I’ve long wanted to commission a musical setting of her work, and I finally decided to pursue the idea in earnest towards the end of 2019.

I chose a poem entitled “Night Watch,” which describes a moment of lying awake at night, listening with some unease to the sounds of the house, while comforting a sleepless child (me!). The poem is attractive to me on a number of levels—its description of silence and the most subtle sounds of night, and the feelings of anxiety that they evoke, and the family connections contained within it (my own child self, my father, and my grandmother are all present in the poem).

In 2020, I approached Buffalo-based composer Caroline Mallonee about setting the poem for soprano, piano, and cello, as I wanted my own daughter, a budding cellist, to be a part of the project. Mallonee’s music beautifully captures both the lightness and darkness of the poem: tango-like gestures describe the act of a mother pulling her restless child into an embrace, the harmonics of the cello depict the sound of a furnace turning off and on, and a sudden turn to the warmth of D-flat major evokes the depth of feeling between mother and child. Yet restlessness pervades the musical texture, erupting towards the end in a moment of anxiety “as dark shapes move and meet and dissipate.”

It has been ten years since my last recital with my dear friend, the soprano Gwen Coleman. There is much to admire in Gwen’s artistry. What I love most about Gwen’s singing is the tremendous care she takes with words, the way she measures them, tastes the music in them, and imbues them with meaning. The roots of our friendship are in our shared experience as mothers of young children nearly 20 years ago, and I’m forever grateful to her for the kindness she extended to me as I learned to find my footing as a musician while settling into my new role as a mother. For all of these reasons, she has been the perfect collaborator for this project.

I’m grateful for the support of my mother’s circle of friends from her days in the English department at Kansas State University. I remember their lively meetings in my home as a child, when they would meet to discuss books and politics late into the night. A core group of them have remained in touch, and they have provided financial support for this commission. This connection adds another layer of meaning; it is a tangible reminder of the relationships that lift us, that buoy us through moments of challenge.

The larger impulse behind the project is ultimately the desire to be engaged in creative work that speaks to my own life experience, that is rooted in the relationships most dear to me. I love that it feels lifted by a web of women across generations—my grandmother, the voice of my mother as a young woman, her dear friends, a dear friend of my own, and my daughter.  

I’m grateful to my daughter, Amelia, for engaging with this piece in spite of the difficulties presented by the fact that she is now in college many miles away, pursuing serious study in the sciences. There are no words to describe the joy I feel communicating with her through music. I’m doubly grateful that my mother can be present to hear it.