Songs of the Questioner

I. What of the Darkness?
II. A Lost Hour
III. Orbits

SATB divisi, piano | Duration c. 16'00”

Songs of the Questioner was composed over a span of two years and completed after I was invited to attend the Choral Institute at Oxford as a guest composer in 2014. I found that my oblique position at the institute allowed me to fully appreciate the individual transformations in the conductors I observed. What I began to see was that this remarkable institute created a safe environment for conductors to ask questions – not only verbal questions meant to hone their craft, but introspective questions of self-identification and the nature of their art.

Through observation I learned that the process of questioning is incredibly important to musical and personal development. I also came to realize the full extent of the impact my grandmother’s death had had on me two months prior to arriving in Oxford. Her death caused me to question everything in my life, and it wasn’t until spending a week in the calming monastic atmosphere of St. Stephen’s House, Oxford that specific questions of faith, human nature, and love came into focus. At that point I turned to Richard Le Gallienne’s English Poems and constructed a narrative that matched what I observed to be at the heart of this questioning process.

Songs of the Questioner brings us down the path that each of us takes as we recede into our minds to question important aspects of life and death. The literary device of the question mark is transmuted from a visual image on the page into a musical concept played by the piano; low pedal tones and broad, swirling harmonies in upper registers represent the ball and curl of the question mark respectively. The chorus and piano parts also have an unusual relationship in the work. The piano part contains the emotional heart of the work, the internal feeling of questioning oneself, while the choir effectively “translates” this music using the text. In this way the piano represents our subconscious and wordless thought stream; the choir is of the conscious mind that attempts to decipher this stream in real time.

Songs of the Questioner is the title track of the first full length CD by GRAMMY-nominated conductor James Jordan and his Philadelphia-based professional choir The Same Stream. The CD is now available on iTunes, Spotify and Amazon, as well as directly from the choir at www.TheSameStreamChoir.com, and features the music of Thomas LaVoy, Paul Mealor, Dan Forrest and Peter Relph.

I. What of the Darkness?

What of the darkness? Is it very fair?
Are there great calms and find ye silence there?
Like soft-shut lilies all your faces glow
With some strange peace our faces never know,
With some great faith our faces never dare.
Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it there?

Is it a Bosom where tired heads may lie?
Is it a Mouth to kiss our weeping dry?
Is it a Hand to still the pulse's leap?
Is it a Voice that holds the runes of sleep?
Day shows us not such comfort anywhere.
Dwells it in Darkness? Do you find it there?

Out of the Day's deceiving light we call,
Day that shows man so great and God so small,
That hides the stars and magnifies the grass;
O is the Darkness too a lying glass,
Or, undistracted, do you find truth there?
What of the Darkness? Is it very fair?

II. A Lost Hour

God gave us an hour for our tears,
One hour out of all the years,
For all the years were another's gold,
Given in a cruel troth of old.

And how did we spend his boon?
That sweet miraculous flower
Born to die in an hour,
Late born to die so soon.

Did we watch it with breathless breath
By slow degrees unfold?
Did we taste the innermost heart of it
The honey of each sweet part of it?
Suck all its hidden gold
To the very dregs of its death?

Nay, this is all we did with our hour—
We tore it to pieces, that precious flower;
Like any daisy, with listless mirth,
We shed its petals upon the earth;
And, children-like, when it all was done,
We cried unto God for another one.