A Street Where Strange Birds Purr
for mixed ensemble
fl, cl, alto sax, tr, hn, vln, cel, perc, pno
14 min
A continued obsession with the poetry of E.E. Cummings is where the spark for “A Street Where Strange Birds Purr” began. The abstract, avant-garde use of language by Cummings has always fascinated me, largely for its musical, percussive character as well as it’s silky lyricism...the interdisciplinary nature of Cummings and his ability to weave various forms of art into a singular poem always spoke greatly to me, as my music is often times inspired by the creative work of others. The poem that this piece is based off of seems to be a creative self-portrait of Cummings and thus that is what this piece became for me. I hinged on two artists that Cummings explores in this poem, Picasso and Cézanne, and picked two of their works that I felt best represented two incredibly important aspects of my creative soul.
I. Introspection (after Picasso)
Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror has always represented intense personal examination for me. Introspection, self-reflection, and meditation. When composing this first movement, I hinged on 4 distinct, but simple musical ideas and how the spastic interlinking of such ideas could create a sound world that sounds quite similar to my mind at the start of my creative process. All over the place, not very focused, and hard to understand. In order to compose, I need a deep period of reflection where I start to break down who I am. I sift through these complicated frenzies in order to find my identity as an artist, my sound. Compositionally in this piece, I do the same. I slowly start to sift through the excess musical material, searching for what is my soul idea, my muse...and eventually I find it. In order to understand who I am as an artist, I must understand who I am as a person. I must take myself apart, figure out who I am, and then put myself back together. This manifests musically though the saxophone and cello, soloistically exploring a singular note through widened vibrato. To me, this represents a sound wave. As a spiritual individual, an artist, a lover of nature...all these things hinge on how I experience the world (and myself) aurally. I listen for individual sounds and then began to piece these individual sounds (and myself) back together. And that is exactly what I did with the musical material in this movement. Breaking it down before putting it back together.
II. Intimacy (after Cézanne)
The most terrifying, enjoyable, and intimate part of my compositional process is sharing my music. After I’ve done the appropriate introspection, I get to share a piece of my soul with the performers and they get to share in the process of realizing this work. Cézanne’s Women Bathing represents a sense of communal intimacy that I feel is very similar to sharing my music. The women are bare in front of each other out of necessity and comfort with one anohter. There does not seem to be any hinderance to each another, in fact some of them are helping wash each other. When I present my music to the performers, I feel bare. And I know that the best performers lay themselves bare in the concert hall. This movement takes a relatively simple musical concept (the pentatonic scale), and manipulates it in order to get this feeling of peace, intense tension, and release. Naturally, when approaching a performance (as a composer and a performer) there are nerves, frustrations, preconceived systems in our heads that take away from being in the moment or truly experience the art right away. This musically manifests in this movement as tension. However, whenever you are able to break through such anxieties, there is a moment of great relief, release, and a following peace. You are gifted with a wonderful understanding of your place in the music, the world, and the inherent unity in the human experience. That is the experience I am portraying in this movement.
Throughout writing this piece, I experienced the very thing I was writing about. The introspection required to understand myself as an artist, and what it feels like to share my music with other people. When I think of music, myself as a composer, and the complex but fruitful poetry of E.E. Cummings, introspection and intimacy are as good of a linguistic descriptor as I can get to explain the impact it has on my creative soul. This piece moves such description from a linguistic sphere to a musical.
Recording soon!!