Reintroductions and new music

Hello everyone!

The last time I posted was well over a year ago, and in that time a lot has changed. I changed schools and studied composition full time for a year, an experience which greatly deepened my understanding and skill of music generally, and allowed new paths in my own artistry to form. I will be slowly going through and posting some of my more recent pieces here, as a way to both reintroduce myself to everyone here, and to come to grips with this great community again. I hope to hear from you all soon!

With all of that said, this post is really about a choral piece that I wrote back in the spring. It is a setting of some Sara Teasdale poetry, making a quasi-political statement about war. Please bear in mind that the performers in this recording were under-rehearsed high school students, many of whom had never performed new music and found this challenging to learn. As such, there are some substantial errors in the performance, but for the most part this premiere recording came across well. 

I hope you like it, let me know what you think!

Hi @mercurypickles!

I think given the difficulty of your piece the performance went very well considering it was sung by high-schoolers!  And congrats on getting performed!

I like the text, although I won't profess to understand what it means!  (But I'm kinda disappointed - no mention of Betelgeuse?!  LoL)  I like how you set the poem.  The piece starts with a soloist who is clearly the most skilled singer and who you demanded the most out of.  Then, the rest of the choir takes turns singing, first the women, then the men, and then you finally bring them together with the soloist joining.  What was the meaning of the dissonant chords that the piano sometimes inserts in between the phrases?  I think you had plenty of harmonic variety and lots of changes in key, so the performance went well considering that!  Thanks for sharing!