On the Question of Angels
SATB Choir, Piano, Bird Sounds
ca. 8 minutes in duration
Completed 09/15/2021 in Baton Rouge LA
Commissioned by the University Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, LA
hovering with spread wings.
Splintered feathers swing
like arms raising a chorale score
for an alto to sight-read.
White and gray choir robe—it WAS
the mockingbird!—ruffles in slow flight.
Call it suicide mission:
credo/collision/death/angel.
Call it the misery of the world,
the grisly accidents, murderous
barriers, random enemies,
aimless war on whatever
wants nothing more than to sing.
Call it the demise of a bird
that may be the very one come
to tell us what we all long to know.
The text for this song was written by Ava Haymon, the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Louisiana, in 2008 and reads as follows:
Thump. Bird-crash
into the window. I wince
and—brief sin—hope
it’s the mockingbird
that woke us up so early,
expounding secondhand repertoire.
Rising sun shoots straight at me,
backlights the splat of goo
and feathers stuck on the pane.
In the warming air, soft currents
stir the thumb-sized mess and,
can you believe it, there’s an angel
My goal in writing this song was to create an almost hypnagogic which where the listener is just coming out of sleep. In this groggy, slow-to-wake state, they are able to which the miraculous within the mundane, which ultimately brings more questions to be asked after they have had their morning coffee.
The score is available here: