Reach Beyond Grasp (3 groups with spatial separation)

Dover Beach was meant to be a string orchestra piece; however, the preliminary reading (the enclosed recording) was done as a string quintet. It was played during Merit School of Music’s Annual Performathon on Feb. 20, 2010, and at the Grainger Ballroom of the Chicago Symphony Center on March 14th, 2010 in celebration of Mark Anthony Turnage's residency with the CSO and collaboration with the Merit School of Music. Both performances were in string quintet form. It is based on Matthew Arnold’s poem of the same name, and is an evocation of the power of nature and its connection with deep thought. The piece was written to reflect the structure and spirit of the poem. I was inspired to write this piece because of the beauty of the poem, and its eloquence with which it describes a changing world. Dover Beach won 1st place the 2010 IMEA All-State Composition Program in the Solo/Chamber Ensemble category.

Dover Beach (for String Orchestra)

Three Songs Without Words was written two years ago. It is inspired by the lyrical works of many composers, such as Mendelssohn and Grieg. It describes three very different moods, during a long, harsh Chicago winter, which was made harder by the fact that I had just discovered I had to face new physical difficulties. The second movement, Lamenting, is a direct channeling of the depression I had felt afterward discovering the nature of these physical challenges. Three Songs Without Words took third place in the Illinois Music Educators Association’s 2009 All-State Composition Competition. 


Three Songs Without Words - II. Lamenting (for Trumpet, Violin, and Cello)

Three Songs Without Words was written two years ago. It is inspired by the lyrical works of many composers, such as Mendelssohn and Grieg. It describes three very different moods, during a long, harsh Chicago winter, which was made harder by the fact that I had just discovered I had to face new physical difficulties. The third movement, Spring Fanfare, was my resolve to look towards springtime and the brighter side of everything. Three Songs Without Words took third place in the Illinois Music Educators Association’s 2009 All-State Composition Competition. 


Three Songs Without Words - III. Spring Fanfare (for Trumpet, Violin, and Cello)

Aurafantasia

Dance and Chorale for Orchestra

Contact Zae Munn directly for score access: zmunn@saintmarys.edu

This is the premiere of Hushed Haiku, for mixed choir and piano, composed by Zae Munn. Commissioned by the South Bend Chamber Singers, Nancy Menk, conductor, David Eicher, piano. 12/17/17, Church of Loretto, Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN. The lyrics are five unpublished haiku by American novelist and poet Karen Hesse.

Hushed Haiku, written for the South Bend Chamber Singers and completed in 2017, is a musical setting of five unpublished haiku by Karen Hesse, an American author of historically based books for young adults. As with traditional haiku, Hesse’s five evoke images of the natural world, and these five have a particular focus on the season of winter.

Haiku syllabic structure requires five syllables in the first and third lines of each three-line haiku, and the number five figures prominently throughout Hushed Haiku—five sections, five-part chorus, 5/8 and 5/4  meters in alternating sections, and a five-word phrase, built of one significant word from each of the five haiku, provides the text for a unifying musical ostinato. 

In her choral and vocal works, Munn typically sets texts by living writers, including Peg Lauber, Marilyn Taylor, and Karen Hesse. One of Hesse’s young adult novels, Witness, was the basis of the libretto for Zae’s 2006 full-length opera of the same name and her very short opera, Night of Blue Magic, sets 22 haiku by Hesse. 

Everything is hushed
on the first snowy morning,
even the sparrows.

A single candle
lighting the cave of winter,
reflects in your eyes 
Days so short, the light
becomes an honored guest who
never overstays.
Little mouse sleeping
in a nest of grass and weeds.
Tail wrapped close around.
Beautiful new snow,
resting its white cheek against
the quilted rooftops.
	--Karen Hesse

Dover Beach (for String Orchestra)

David Jin

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