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Let There Be Sparrows, then for chamber orchestra
Performed by KammarensembleN Stockholm
Bobby Collins, conductor

Let There Be Sparrows, then

Composed for The Sound Ensemble in Seattle and KammarensembleN in Stockholm 2022

Program Notes

This piece was written as part of a collaboration between two contemporary music ensembles in two different countries: The Sound Ensemble in Seattle, USA and KammarensembleN in Stockholm, Sweden.  Swedish composer Marie Samuelson and I each wrote a piece for the occasion, both pieces to be premiered in the winter of 2022 in Seattle and Stockholm. 

I chose as the inspiration for my piece the Passacaglia in d minor by Swedish composer Dietrich Buxtehude, 1637-1707.  The city of his birth, Helsingborg, was originally part of Denmark but became part of Sweden in 1657.  The piece has been the source of variations by other composers, most notably Johann Sebastian Bach. The Passacaglia theme makes its appearance several times in Let There Be Sparrows, then; first heard in the vibraphone’s opening statement, later in the strings and brass. I also used fragments of the contrapuntal voices that occur through the Passacaglia, including use of repeated octaves and minor seconds. Sparrows diverges from the Passacaglia in the use of extended techniques, including bent notes in the vibraphone, indeterminate notes and rhythms at climactic points, and many timbral effects. 
In the Passacaglia, many things struck me: Buxtehude’s insistently repetitive minor 2nds (which I incorporated into the extended trumpet solo), the use of repeated octaves, surprising harmonies, and intricate counterpoint.  For my piece, I borrowed snippets of motives, compositional devices, and oddities that struck me Buxtehude’s piece, and then blended it with contemporary sensibilities.  The result is a tension between the ancient and the contemporary, between the consonance and dissonance, and even between how we often consider nature to be soothing, when in reality, it often is not.  These tensions are also reflected in the poem At The Solstice by Shaun O’Brien, which also served as inspiration for Let There Be Sparrows, then.  The poem explores the tension as winter turns to spring, and is the source of the title of my piece. 

At the Solstice  - Shaun O'Brien
 
We say Next time we’ll go away,
But then the winter happens, like a secret
We’ve to keep yet never understand
As daylight turns to cinema once more:
A lustrous darkness deep in ice-age cold,
And the print in need of restoration
Starting to consume itself
With snowfall where no snow is falling now.
Or could it be a cloud of sparrows, dancing
In the bare hedge that this gale of light
Is seeking to uproot? Let it be sparrows, then,
Still dancing in the blazing hedge,
Their tender fury and their fall,
Because it snows, because it burns.

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