Arrow (download)

Description

Voicing: TBB choir, piano

Level: 3

Duration: 3:45

To see perusal score, please contact Jocelyn.

Text

The aiming:

you aim at the center of the eye
you gather all landscape around that single point:

if a bird-ribbon flies across the edge

if a cloud teases the sun you gather all to the one point

there is only one

The letting go:

you are let go
you are no longer grasped empty air surrounds you

you no longer lean against the bow your hock is free
you are free
you are in danger

remember the center
all of you remembers the center

The flight:

you are moving along an invisible track (you make it yourself)
straight as your spine is straight

– “Arrow” reprinted from Laughing Gas: Poems New and Selected by Ruth Whitman, Copyright © 1990 Wayne State University Press, with the permission of Wayne State University Press.

Composer’s Notes

Send your singers on a music theory scavenger hunt! This work is based on a repeating motive that you can find in the vocal parts as well as the piano: scale degrees (in this order) 1-2-3-2-1. Can you see how this motive is also related to the opening chord? How about m. 74? How about the final chord?