Posts Tagged ‘Rob Shuss’

Seven Last Words: A Primer

Wednesday, February 10th, 2016

The Prodigal Blogger returns, after a busy season of holidays and the first month of the New Year have passed!

I am looking forward to the premieres, one at a time, of my new set of organ pieces, Seven Last Words, over the season of Lent.  Rob Shuss, organist at Shoregate United Methodist Church in Willowick, my home church, will play a new piece in the set during the 10am worship service at Shoregate.  The premiere will stretch through Lent, beginning on Sunday, February 14, continuing every Sunday until Palm Sunday, March 20, and concluding with Good Friday worship on March 25.

I wanted to take a moment to put down a few ideas to help explain the piece, how it is put together, and what it means.

This work was the result of a conversation Pastor Jon Wilterdink and I had about the role of art and music in Christian worship.  Shoregate has a strong, diverse musical tradition that incorporates many members of the congregation in both vocal and instrumental music, and the church where I grew up had a similar relationship to music.  It is safe to say that much of who I am as a musician was formed in the church, both by participation and by listening to the music of others.  At the time of our conversation, Pastor Jon was planning a more music-centered worship for Advent, and wondered if something similar could be done for Lent.

The Lenten season is central to my experience of the Christian faith.  The Scriptures for Lent emphasize Jesus’ humanity while at the same time underscoring His divinity, and there is a relentless intensification as the Church once again follows his ministry as it begins in earnest, culminates in triumph and ends in seeming tragedy.  I thought immediately of the theme of Christ’s Seven Last Words from the cross, the utterances (not words, but phrases, really) that the various Gospel writers recorded during his public execution.[1]

I thought immediately, too, of Rob Shuss, Shoregate’s wonderful organist, who provides the support for so much of our music making.  A set of solo organ pieces would be an opportunity to show his talents and abilities in a new light.  It would, also, be a challenge for me as a composer–although I have included organ in music for larger ensembles, and arranged the music of others for organ, these are my first solo organ pieces.  Each instrument has its quirks and unique abilities, but organ is special because each instrument has a somewhat unique set of capabilities, and even instruments manufactured to be identical are installed in different locations.  A piece for organ, then, will, more so than for other genres, rely much more intently on the skill of the performer to make decisions about the overall sound that will work best on any given instrument.  Not being an organist myself, I have made suggestions regarding the registration, or specific sounds to be mixed and blended, but in the end, I have to trust that Rob will work with my notes and Shoregate’s instrument to produce a clear, effective performance.

Since my new work was to be seven pieces, each about 4 minutes long, but spread over 40 days, I looked for ways to organize the entire set and make them coherent and relevant.  Each piece is a short meditation on the “word” at hand, and each is influenced by one of the Psalms, which Jesus often quoted and turned to during his agony.  But, to ensure that the pieces would not be seven independent pieces bunched together, I found three musical ways to unify the set.  If, someday, someone chooses to play all seven pieces in one sitting (which would take about 30 minutes), I hope the work can be heard as a unified whole, more than the sum of its parts.

An overall plan emerged, then, before I had written a note of music.  This is not unusual for a composer, and for any large work, one needs to have a road map of sorts in mind.  There may be detours along the way, or the journey to a complete piece may end up with a completely different destination, but without an ending in mind, the route will either ramble aimlessly, or simply never leave home.  Since there is nothing better for the creative process than a good spreadsheet, I fired up Microsoft Excel and laid out my ideas, one row for each of the seven pieces, and a column for the various Scriptures and attributes I hoped to incorporate.

To hold the seven pieces together musically, I used several devices.  First, all seven pieces have the same pitch, C, as their tonic, or musical home base.  Each piece, however, uses one of the seven diatonic modes.  Without going down the rabbit hole of music theory, a mode is a major scale (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do) that chooses a note other than do as its tonic pitch (home base).[2]    At any rate, each piece has C as its home base, but uses a slightly different scale.  Over the seven pieces, the modes are organized so that the first piece uses the brightest mode (Lydian) and the last piece uses the darkest mode (Locrian).  Each mode has seven pitches, and between any two consecutive pieces, six of those seven pitches are held in common.  The result is a gradual shift from light to dark as the tonic pitch remains the same while the other pitches change, symbolizing the progression to the darkest day of the Church calendar, Good Friday.  Each piece begins and ends with a cluster of all seven pitches for that mode played at the same time.  The cluster is repeated three times, to remind us of the three nails that held Jesus to the cross.

Lastly, each piece is centered around a musical interval–the distance between two pitches.  Musicians number these intervals by counting the number of note names involved–a third, for example, might be the notes B and D.  Counting those note names and the note C between gives us the name “third.”  (Incidentally, we name intervals this way for the same reason that we speak of Jesus rising from the dead on the “third day”–because the Greeks and Romans didn’t have a concept of zero.) I’ve chosen these intervals for their traditional symbolism, and they remind us of various aspects of the Crucifixion.

Here is a summary of all seven pieces:

1.  Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.  Luke 23:34.  To be performed the First Sunday in Lent (February 14).  It uses the Lydian mode (a G-major scale, starting on C), and centers on the interval of the second, symbolizing duality, important here as Christ’s nature as fully man and fully God.  It is associated with Psalm 3.

2. Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.  Luke 23:43.  For the Second Sunday in Lent (February 21).  It uses the Ionian mode (also known as the C-major scale), and emphasizes the interval of the unison (or first), symbolizing unity, the final covenant that God makes with us through the Crucifixion.  Is is accompanied by Psalm 62.

3. Dear woman, here is your son… here is your mother. John 19:26-27.  For the Third Sunday in Lent (February 28).  This piece uses the Mixolydian mode (an F-major scale, starting on C), and focuses on the fourth to represent the church and the imperative that we have to care for each other as if we were born into the same family.  Psalm 2 is the reading for this piece.

4. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34.  For the Fourth Sunday of Lent (March 6).  This piece uses the Dorian mode (a B-flat-major scale, starting on C).  This middle piece, using the middle mode, is inspired by the only one of the Seven Last Words to appear in more than one Gospel.  Its musical interval is the sixth, symbolizing Satan, and the temptation that is memorialized in the whole Lenten season, and that must have been renewed for Jesus as he hung on the cross.  The text is the wrenching Psalm 22, also the source of Jesus’ words.

5. I thirst.  John 19:28.  For the Fifth Sunday of Lent (March 13).  This piece uses the Aeolian mode (also called the C-minor scale).  The number five has often been used to symbolize humanity, and since this Last Word underscores Jesus’ own human needs, the interval of the fifth plays a prominent role.  Psalm 42 restates this literal thirst as a spiritual thirst.

6. It is finished.  John 19:29-30.  For Palm Sunday (March 20).  The dark Phrygian mode (an A-flat major scale, starting on C) contrasts the triumph of Palm Sunday with the suffering to come.  The musical interval of the seventh, symbolizing God, reminds us that what is finished at this moment is not only the man Jesus’ life, but God’s plan to finally redeem his creation.  At this central moment of history, it is only fitting to consider Psalm 118, the literal middle book of the Protestant Bible.

7. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.  Luke 23:46.  For Good Friday (March 25).  The darkest mode, Locrian (an D-flat major scale, starting on C) completes the cycle of modes.  The interval of the third symbolizes the Trinity, reunited at the moment of Jesus’ death.  Psalm 31 provides the accompanying text.

I hope that hearing these pieces through the season of Lent will help you focus your attention on the topics of the season and consider, as I often have, the grandeur and majesty of God’s grace, through Jesus’ suffering as a human being.  It is my hope that, after Good Friday, we will feel the depths of that darkest moment, and that Easter will thus be all the brighter for us as we celebrate anew the risen Lord.

 

 [1] These seven verses have often been a theme for composers over the centuries.  The two most famous pieces are Théodore Dubois’ oratorio Les sept paroles du Christ, an 1867 work for vocal soloists, chorus, and orchestra; and Hadyn’s Die Worte des Erlösers am Kreuze, in versions for orchestra, orchestra with chorus, and string quartet, from 1786.  Both pieces last over an hour in full performance, and I take some inspiration from them, but neither piece is really my model for Seven Last Words.

[2] If you want to know more about modes, here’s a pretty good YouTube video about it.

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What I’ve Been Writing, and a World Premiere

Saturday, November 28th, 2015

I took a moment this morning to put the final touches on one work, and “check in” with two more.

I spent part of October finishing a new piano cycle, The Rainbow’s Daughter.  This is one of those rare pieces that I’ve written without a commission, although the first movement, “Polychrome’s Prism,” was composed as part of the Cleveland Composer’s Guild collaboration with the Music Settlement for Taniya Dsouza, a student of Nella Kammerman here in Cleveland.  I wanted to explore more fully the character of Polychrome, who appears in L. Frank Baum’s The Road to Oz, the fourth of his Oz novels.  I discovered Polychrome as I was reading the Oz books to my son, Noah, and thinking about a set of pieces based on characters from this land across the desert.  I knew that I didn’t want to focus on the obvious foursome–Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion–but on at least a few of the other very interesting characters in Baum’s world.  I considered writing short sketches about several subjects, but in writing “Polychrome’s Prism,” I discovered a tetrachord, [0236], that could be easily modified to any of the four triads.  “Prism” made use of the minor triad, so I developed a plan to base three subsequent movements on the augmented, diminished and major triads.  Thus, “Polychrome’s Passion,” “Polychrome’s Pearl,” and “Polychrome’s Power.”  It has been interesting, and refreshing, to write a piece using such specific harmonic materials.  This is not my typical way of composing, but it felt like a necessary and important exercise.  The four pieces seem to speak a common language, and, as intended, reflect a single character.  I am now, of course, stuck with a piece that has no plan for a performance.  I will send it out to some of my previous collaborators, or perhaps find a performer for an upcoming Cleveland Composers Guild performance.

In October, I also began work on a commission from Renee Goubeaux, a cellist with the Toledo Symphony, for a new work for cello and piano.  It has been nearly a decade since I wrote for a solo stringed instrument, and it has been fun digging into the capabilities and potential of a world I haven’t visited in a while.  I have the piece about half-written–it will be a ten- to twelve-minute piece, and there is currently about six minutes of music, but it is on hold while I’ve given the draft to Renee for comment.  I’m curious to see how this part of the collaboration works.  Renee and I went to high school together, and she is the first composer I ever met–we both started composing in the gifted and talented program.  I don’t think she has kept up with that side of her creative work, but she at least knows about the process of putting notes on paper, and it will be interesting to bring someone with her background in at this phase of the creative process.  The piece is tentatively titled Meditation, since I’ve been reading Marcus Aurelius this fall.

Earlier this month, I sat down with Jon Wilterdink, our pastor at Shoregate United Methodist Church, for lunch in the cafeteria at Lakeland.  We discussed worship and the arts, and what the church can be doing to foster the work of artists.  I had reached out to him after reading this article on the subject.  At the end of our conversation, he asked me to contribute musically to our worship for the coming Lenten season.  The idea that immediately came to mind was a cycle of organ pieces based on the Seven Last Words of Christ.  Rob Shuss, our organist, was game, so I have started writing, according to a fairly intricate plan.  I have associated each saying with several Scriptural and musical elements, so each movement will also refer to one of Jesus’ parables and to a Psalm, as well as being focused on a specific diatonic mode (progressing from Lydian to Locrian over the course of the cycle), and emphasize a diatonic interval within that mode.  The pieces will be premiered on the six Sundays in Lent (beginning Febraury 14, 2016) and on Good Friday.  This is my first work for organ, so I’m taking some time to try to understand this instrument, but also trying to work steadily, as Rob will need the pieces as soon as possible.  I have written the first movement, “Father forgive them,” in Lydian mode, emphasizing the interval of the second, and associated with Psalm 3, and the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.

This is my first sacred music written on commission in many years, and the first to be performed in over a decade.  One struggle I have had as a composer is finding outlets and opportunities to write music about my faith.  There is a huge demand for music in the church, of course, but not for work that pushes musical boundaries in search of a spiritual experience.  The difficult thing has been to find a community that meets our spiritual needs but that is also interested in what I can offer.  I’m excited to make this attempt, although 28 minutes of music for an unfamiliar instrument in just a couple of months is a little daunting.  At least Christmas break is in the intervening period, and the later pieces can be polished even as the earlier ones are being premiered.

Speaking of premieres, Antoine Clark and the McConnell Arts Center Chamber Orchestra gave a splendid first performance of my work …into the suggestive waters… in Worthington, Ohio on November 1.  Becky was unable to attend because of back troubles, but my father and brother came along, and my mother came to the dress rehearsal so that she could watch the kids during the concert.  Having a professional orchestra commission and play my music was a fantastic feeling.  I now need to work on getting a second performance of the piece somewhere, and that means leaning on conductors and sending them the excellent recording of the premiere.  I made some great contacts at the post-concert reception, and I would love to increase the presence of my music in my hometown.

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