Donald Nally reminded me a few days ago that The Crossing and I have been collaborating for 17 years. Ever since Piffaro, The Renaissance Band put us together for Vespers, we’ve plowed this field o’music together. I’m astonished at, and gratified by all these opportunities over the years.
This latest work, Let All the Strains of Joy, is the last bit of music I completed in the spring before the bottom dropped out of my health. I’m doing much better now, but The Crossing premiered this in October while I was still laid up. The live recording behind this score video is ridiculously brilliant and vivacious and hammers home to me—again—how fortunate I am to compose for Donald and The Crossing.
I wrote this, indeed, as a love letter to them. Donald is so instinctual in his directing. He reveals in the music aspects I either only hint at or that were unconsidered by me (moments that, as soon as I hear them, I wholeheartedly embrace). There are perhaps more than my usual number of tempo and dynamic instructions in this piece, but the performance has so many Donald-led lifts, feints, attacks—those glowing half-seconds of intelligent and artistic consideration—that I’m stupefied into thankfulness.
Much of this is divided into eight voices, and each of those parts gets a turn to shine. They sound delicious. I hear their voices whenever I write for The Crossing, and whenever I write for The Crossing, no matter how challenging the work (and this is one of my more harmonically athletic pieces), I walk away with the knowledge that I could’ve made it twice as hard and they—these thoroughbreds, this army of generals—would’ve handled it easily. What a choir.
My second setting of Rabindranath Tagore. Let All the Strains of Joy, SATB div, a cappella, written as my billet-doux, my thank-you to Donald Nally and The Crossing. Score video. Links to program notes in the YouTube notes. Available from MusicSpoke.