...the paper

2018: Boston, Mass.

ca. 13 minutes

Amplified female Narrator and Ensemble (Clarinet in A, Bass Clarinet in Bb, Piano, 3 Percussionists, Violin, Viola, 2 Cellos)

Written for and premiered by the Contemporary Classical Music Performance majors at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

Text by Charlotte Perkins Gillman

This work is a dramatic setting of selections from The Yellow Wallpaper. In creating it I began first with the text; making selections of the specific sections that I wanted to use, and then identifying a rhythm for the speech patterns. From there I began to shift emphasis around in certain areas in order to create a feeling of tension and uneasiness. Afterwords I approached the text similar to Wagner and his operas. Developing musical ideas to represent various characters and events in the story and utilizing the text as a way to order and develop the various ideas. All of these combined result in a complex meter that is equal parts unsettling and dancelike.

The narrator is also amplified using a stereo set of microphones. This was initially brought up as a way to minimize vocal strain during a long concert, this evolved into a fairly wide stereo arrangement. Having the stereo image brought an eerie atmosphere to the vocals. While the premiere video doesn’t accent it, the short delays and movement slightly obscured and destabilized the voice in a thematically relevant way.

The score is available here.