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Vocal
Choral
Chamber
Piano
Dramatic – please see the page for my opera, The Age of Innocence
Vocal
Where we are least alone (2008)
Morgan Harmison, soprano
David Perry, clarinet
Esther Visser, violin
Brett Hodgdon, piano
Recorded live in concert August 2008
Aspen Music Festival and School, Aspen, Colorado
The text of this work is taken from Lord Byron’s great epic poem, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which tells the story of a young man, who, having lived a dissolute life in England, goes on a journey through Europe in search of real meaning to his life. In the stanzas below, he finds himself by Lake Geneva (or Lake Leman, as it is called in the poem) in Switzerland, which serves as inspiration for some of Byron’s most eloquent poetry—a paean to the “eternal harmony” between nature and music.
All Heaven and Earth are still— though not in sleep,
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most;
And silent, as we stand in thoughts too deep:—
All Heaven and Earth are still: From the high host
Of stars, to the lulled lake and mountain coast,
All is concentrated in a life intense,
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost,
But hath a part of Being, and a sense
Of that which is of all Creator and Defence.
Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt
In solitude, where we are least alone;
A truth, which through our being then doth melt,
And purifies from self: it is a tone,
The soul and source of Music, which makes known
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm
Like to the fabled Cytherea’s zone,
Binding all things with beauty;—’twould disarm
The spectre Death, had he substantial power to harm.
– George Gordon, Lord Byron
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
Canto the Third
Stanzas 89 & 90
Two Songs (2009)
Lawrence Indik, baritone
Charles Abramovic, piano
Recorded live in concert January 2010
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In my vocal music, I feel strongly that the music should illumine the text by revealing the essence of the words’ meaning, and give them a power of expression that goes beyond a reading of the words without music. To achieve this, I find it is also important to choose a text that has room for the music—there are some great poems whose so dense with meaning that I feel would benefit little from a musical setting (Shakespeare’s sonnets are a good example). The text of these Two Songs offered me beautiful words whose expression could be heightened by the music: “Old Adam” is a wonderfully freakish poem by the 19th-century English poet Thomas Lovell Beddoes, whose references to “the wind dying” offered an opportunity to employ the baritone’s falsetto range, highlighting the eerie mood of the words. Yeats’s “The Sorrow of Love” is a kind of lamenting epilogue to the Beddoes—more lyrical in tone, but referring back to the first song with the words “and his cry” sung in falsetto. The element of sorrow that permeates both poems serves to bind the two songs together, forming a kind of portrait of grief for the entire work.
Old Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leak’d the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It’s only two devils, that blow,
Through a murderer’s bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts’ moonshine.
Ho! Eve, my grey carrion wife,
When we have supped on king’s marrow,
Where shall we drink and make merry our life?
Our nest it is queen Cleopatra’s skull,
’Tis cloven and crack’d,
And batter’d and hack’d,
But with tears of blue eyes it is full:
Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo!
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It’s only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer’s bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts’ moonshine.
– Thomas Lovell Beddoes
The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man’s image and his cry.
A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the laboring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers,
Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man’s image and his cry.
– William Butler Yeats
Job (2011)
Lawrence Indik, baritone
Feifei Zhang, magnetic resonator piano
Recorded live in concert December 2011
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In this piece, I tried to address the ever-pertinent problem of human suffering, and how a belief in a God might be at all compatible in the face of such suffering. The Book of Job certainly asks these questions, and I felt it was incumbent upon me to bring new meaning to this text in my musical setting, so that it might have special resonance for listeners of my own time. The magnetic resonator piano, an invention by composer Andrew McPherson, provided me with timbres that could evoke a sense of the divine and enable me to create a distinctive musical work: electromagnets placed over the strings of a grand piano cause the strings to vibrate, producing a ghostly, other-worldly timbre, not unlike the sound of a soft pipe-organ or a bowed vibraphone. In this work, the baritone represents not only Job, but also an ordinary human being, asking whether God really does hear the voice of one who calls from the depths of suffering. The ending of the piece is deliberately left on an ambiguous note: Job is shattered by his experience, and realizes his insignificance in the presence of God, singing in Hebrew Job 8:9: “For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow.” He concludes soberly, “Behold, the fear of the Lord: that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”
Mima-ama-kim k’raticha adonöy.
Adonöy shim-öh v’koli,
tih-yenah öz-nechöh
ka-shuvot l’kol tacha-nunöy.
Im avonot tish-mör yöh,
adonöy
mi ya-amod.
[Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord.
My Lord, hearken to my voice:
let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas.
If you were to preserve iniquities, my Lord,
Who could stand?]
[Psalm 130:1–3, Hebrew Bible]
Remember, I beseech thee,
that thou hast made me as the clay;
and wilt thou bring me into dust again?
And where is now my hope?
As for my hope, who shall see it?
They shall go down to the bars of the pit,
when our rest together is in the dust.
For I know thou wilt bring me to death,
to the house appointed for all living.
I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me.
Mine eye poureth out tears to God.
When I waited for light, there came only darkness.
I went mourning without the sun.
I stood up, and cried in the congregation.
My harp also is turned to mourning, and my organ
into the voice of them that weep.
[Job 10:9; 17:15–16; 30:23, 20; 16:20; 30:26, 28, 31, King James Version]
Mima-ama-kim k’raticha adonöy.
Adonöy shim-öh v’koli,
tih-yenah öz-nechöh
ka-shuvot l’kol tacha-nunöy.
[Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord.
My Lord, hearken to my voice:
let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas]
At this my heart trembleth,
and is moved out of its place.
Hear attentively the noise of his voice,
and the sound that goeth out of his mouth.
After it a voice roareth:
He thundereth with the voice of his excellency;
and he will not stay them when his voice is heard.
For he saith to the snow,
Be thou on the earth;
likewise to the small rain,
and to the great rain of his strength.
He sealeth up the hand of every man;
that all may know his work.
Out of the south cometh the whirlwind:
and cold out of the north.
By the breath of God frost is given:
and the breadth of the waters is strengthened.
He scattereth his bright cloud:
And it is turned round by his counsels,
That they may do whatsoever he commandeth them
upon the face of the earth.
[Job 37:1–2, 4, 6–7, 9–12]
Ki-temohl anahnu welo neda
ki sel yamenu ale-ares.
[For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing,
Because our days upon earth are as a shadow]
[Job 8:9]
Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom;
and to depart from evil is understanding.
[Job 28:28]
From the Valley of Baca (2016): “Not while the snow-shroud”
Lawrence Indik, baritone
Charles Abramovic, piano
Recorded September 2017
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies.—
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.
Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?
High above flood and fire ye held the scroll,
Out of the depths ye published still the Word.
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul:
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths,
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord,
Or died a thousand deaths.
Kindle the silver candle’s seven rays,
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers,
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours
For Truth and Law and Love.
– Emma Lazarus
Three Poems of Emily Dickinson (2017)
Jessica Beebe, soprano
Mark Livshits, piano
Recorded October 2018
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Choral
Fredericksburg (2007)
William Stone, baritone
Temple University Concert Choir
Temple University Chamber Orchestra
Alan Harler, conductor
Recorded live in concert, 9 November 2007
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In November of 1862, in the second year of the American Civil War, General Ambrose Burnside began to lead the Army of the Potomac to Richmond, Virginia, with the intent of seizing the Confederate capital. Burnside’s strategy included a detour through the town of Fredericksburg, Virginia, which would place his forces on a direct route to Richmond. As it happened, the army ended up stalled at the side of the Rappahannock River to the east of Fredericksburg, waiting for pontoon bridges to arrive. When they finally did, General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was already arrayed on the land rising to the west of the town, with Lieutenant General James Longstreet’s division stationed at the part of the elevation called Marye’s Heights. On December 13 Major General Edwin Sumner’s division attempted to take the heights, advancing across a half mile-long field towards a stone wall at the base of the slope. None of them made it even that far: a hail of gunfire from both Longstreet’s artillery and Confederate troops positioned behind the wall repulsed the charge. Four more charges were staved off, leaving the field strewn with dead and dying Union troops. Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who commanded the 20th Maine Regiment, recalled the night after the battle in a memoir published in 1887:
But out of that silence from the battle’s crash and roar rose new sounds more appalling still; a strange ventriloquism of which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan, a wail so far and deep and wide, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key note—weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness. The writhing concord broken by cries for help, some begging for a drop of water, some calling on God for pity, and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun. Some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them…and underneath, all the time, that deep, bass note from closed lips, too hopeless or too heroic to articulate their agony.
The following night, as Union troops dug graves for their fallen comrades, the Northern Lights appeared in the sky; Chamberlain recalled this too in his memoir:
“We will give them a starlight burial,” it was said; but heaven ordained a more sublime illumination. As we bore them in dark and sad procession, their own loved North took up the escort and lifting her glorious lights, led the triumphal march over the bridge that spans the worlds. Fiery lances and banners of blood and flame, columns of pearly light, garlands and wreaths of gold—all pointing upward and beckoning on. Who would not pass on as they did, dead for their country’s life, and lighted to burial by the meteor splendors of their native sky?
In all, the Federals lost 12,653 men in the battle; the Confederates 4,201. Though it was certainly a Union defeat, the Confederates could not claim to have destroyed the Army of the Potomac, and the conflict that consumed the nation was to drag on for another two years, ultimately claiming the lives of over 600,000 men. The horror of the loss of human life was perhaps best put by Lee himself, as he watched the Union men fall in droves at Fredericksburg: “It is well that war is so terrible—we should grow too fond of it.”
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine:
Exaudi vocem meam
Fiant aures tuae intendentes
In vocem deprecationis meae
[Out of the depths I have cried to thee, O Lord:
Hear my voice,
Let thy ears be attentive
to the voice of my supplication.]
– Psalm 129:1-2, Vulgate
Vigil strange I kept on the field one night:
When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day,
One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return’d,with a look I shall never forget;
One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground;
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle.
Till late in the night again I made my way;
Found you in death so cold, dear comrade—found your body, son of responding kisses,
(never again on earth responding;)
Bared your face in the starlight—curious the scene—cool blew the night-wind;
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading;
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night;
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh—Long, long I gazed;
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you, dearest comrade—
Not a tear, not a word;
Vigil of silence, love and death—vigil for you my son and my soldier,
As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;
Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,
I faithfully loved you and cared for you living—
I think we shall surely meet again;)
Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,
My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,
And there and then by the rising sun, my son in his grave,
in his rude-dug grave I laid;
Ending my vigil strange with that—vigil of night and battlefield dim;
Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)
Vigil for comrade swiftly slain—vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d,
I rose from the chill ground, folded my soldier well in his blanket,
And buried him where he fell.
– Walt Whitman,
“Vigil Strange I Kept
on the Field One Night”
from Drum Taps
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine,
Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum.
[Let eternal light shine on them Lord,
With thy saints in eternity.]
– Missa pro defunctis
Ave verum corpus (2014)
Temple University Concert Choir
Paul Rardin, conductor
Recorded April 2017
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Nunc dimittis (Lord, now let) (2016)
Choir of the University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation
Matthew Glandorf, conductor
Recorded September 2016
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Vespers Responsory (2016)
Choir of the University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation
Matthew Glandorf, conductor
Recorded February 2017
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Missa Brevis (2020)
St. Mark’s Church Choir
Bryan Dunnewald, organ
Robert McCormick, conductor
Recorded live March 2022
St. Mark’s Church
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I. KYRIE
Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.
[Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.]
II. SANCTUS
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus,
Domine Deus Sabaoth.
Pleni sunt coeli et terra gloria tua.
Hosanna in excelsis.
Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.
Hosanna in excelsis.
[Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of the Sabbath.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.]
III. AGNUS DEI
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.
[Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, grant us peace.]
Chamber
Nocturne (2000)
Robert McClung, guitar
Recorded live in concert March 2009
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Memoria (2019)
Sara Han, clarinet
Katelyn Bouska, piano
Recorded October 2019
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Fantasia (2008)
Vladimir Dyo, violin
Mark Livshits, piano
Recorded live in concert November 2009
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
I conceived my Fantasia as a character study of sorts: in this case, the violin soloist searches for definition, a sense of completeness; the drama of the piece is derived from the constant frustration of this goal. This struggle is announced in the first minute of the piece, when the legato, falling line of the violin is suddenly interrupted by two chords in the piano, each a group of two sixteenth notes, marked “harshly” in the score. The chords serve as a motive for the rest of the work, a force the soloist must reckon with and attempt to overcome. At times the violin and piano sound like they are in this struggle together, playing the motive in a rhythmic unison, as well as exchanging a rising sixteenth note arpeggio. Finally, however, the violin is left on its own, playing a cadenza that recapitulates a number of previously heard melodic ideas. This effort eventually exhausts itself, with the violin falling to a low B, while the piano makes its foreboding re-entry. The two-note motive reappears in the final measures of the piece, leaving the question open as to whether the struggle was won by the soloist, or if it was in fact a fruitless effort, thus leaving the music on a note of despair.
Three Myths (2008)
Pascal Gallois, bassoon
Recorded live in concert October 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Each movement of this work is based on a Greek myth, as summarized below (freely adapted from Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths):
I. Narcissus
The handsome youth Narcissus saw his own image in a pool of water, and fell in love with himself. He was so enamored that he forgot to eat or drink, and eventually faded away, leaving behind a beautiful flower. The nymph Echo, who had loved him from afar, grieved his death until she too faded away, with only her voice remaining, forever repeating the words of others.
II. Sisyphus
Sisyphus, king of Corinth, having frustrated the god Zeus in his pursuit of Aegina, daughter of Asopus, and tricking Hades into letting him return to world of the living, was finally condemned to push a boulder to the top of a hill, only to see it fall down the other side. He would push the boulder up the hill again, and see it fall, continuing his labor for eternity.
III. Apollo and Daphne
Apollo, the god of music, fell in love with the nymph Daphne and chased her through a forest. Terrified, she sought to escape from him, and called out to her father, the river-god Ladon, who transformed her into a beautiful laurel tree. Having lost Daphne, Apollo took some twigs from the tree and made a crown for himself, so as to remember the nymph he loved.
Pastorale (2009)
Claire Mashburn, flute
Briana Tarby, oboe
Becky Graham, clarinet
Josh Paulus, horn
Vince Karamanov, bassoon
Recorded live in concert August 2009
Brevard Music Center, Brevard, North Carolina
My Pastorale was written in the bucolic surroundings of the Brevard Music Center, Brevard, North Carolina, where I was a student in the composition program in the summer of 2009. I had never before written for wind quintet, and I discovered that one the main challenges was how to treat the timbre of the horn: it is, after all, the one member of the quintet that is not a woodwind instrument, and though it is played with its bell facing away from the audience, its sound has a surprising capacity to penetrate through a musical texture. Taking a great pastoral work of the 20th century as my example, Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings, I treated the horn as almost a solo instrument—it is the last instrument to make its entrance in the piece, and it periodically breaks through with both stentorian interjections as well as broad, lyrical lines. This is not to discount the importance of the other four instruments, as I have tried to highlight their own distinctive timbres in both solo and contrapuntal passages: the wistful, piquant tone of the bassoon; the airy lightness of the flute; the stridency of the clarinet in its upper register; and the mournful quality of the oboe. I hope this piece makes a unique contribution to the pastoral-themed works for this marvelous combination of instruments.
Sextet (2010)
Argento Chamber Ensemble:
Kathy Halverson, oboe
Carol McGonnell, clarinet
Adrian Morejon, bassoon
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Stephanie Griffin, viola
Gregory Hesselink, cello
Recorded live in concert April 2010
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
With every instrumental piece I write, whether it be for a solo instrument or a full orchestra, I always ask myself how effectively I can use the forces I have at my disposal—put another way, how can I create a work that makes every instrument indispensable to the sound and conception of the composition? With my Sextet, I approached this in a way Stravinsky might have done, by juxtaposing choirs of instruments (as in the Symphonies of Wind Instruments): a perky motive in the clarinet and oboe and riff in the bassoon are followed by a chordal texture in the strings. In addition to these textural contrasts, I’ve taken advantage of the strings’ ability to play quarter-tones—that is, notes less than a half-step. This makes for some eerie inflections in the slower, central section of the piece, while the winds play melodic fragments above these sustained, yet unsettled tones. Winds and strings also figure in pairs later on, such as a lyrical line shared by the clarinet and viola, and then by the oboe and cello. These combinations, I think, make for unusual tone-colors, and provide an effective foil for the more angular melodic material. All in all, I hope that every member of the sextet gets a chance to shine as a soloist, and that the treatment of each instrument’s timbre and particular abilities provides an entertaining experience for both the audience and the performers.
Trio (2014)
Rebecca Harris, violin
Myanna Harvey, viola
Cassia Harvey, cello
Recorded September–October 2017
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Piano
“Paul” Variations (1997–): Theme and Variations 1 and 11
Abigail LaVecchia, piano
Recorded live in concert March 2011
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In 1997, for his first birthday, I wrote a theme for my nephew Paul. Each year since then, I’ve written a variation on that theme as a birthday present. These two variations are from 1998 and 2008.
Sonata (2015)
Katelyn Bouska, piano
Recorded December 2017
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
David Carpenter 