Fracture (2013) for alto saxophone by Lucas Marshall Smith

alto saxophone, Andrew Somerville

Premiered November 2013 at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign

Fracture(2013)for amplified alto saxophone

This is a great song for an elementary holiday or winter concert. It is not specifically Christmas oriented, but reflects on sharing time with family/friends and making new memories with loved ones.

I Want to Make a Memory with You (2022) for children's choir and Orff ensemble

...through a glass, darkly... for chamber orchestra
Premiere: April 19th, 2015

Performance by Illinois Modern Ensemble at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Pierre Tang, conductor

Program Notes:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
-- I Corinthians 13:12

	A memory can never completely represent an event.  From the moment the memory is imprinted it begins to decay.  Despite our best efforts to preserve precious moments, details are forgotten, events confused or distorted, and clarity fades.  We are left with fragments of the past, whispers of events that grow softer and softer until they are engulfed in silence and we are left with only a faint sense of how the moment once gripped us—a hollow impression.

	The quote above does not speak about memory, but of the second coming of Christ.  This piece is not concerned with Paul’s literal words to the Corinthians about how their perception of reality is incomplete, but more with the imagery it evokes.  As Paul compares this world to a distorted image seen through a glass in dim lighting, so memories are dark distortions of the events they once represented.  …through a glass, darkly… seeks to explore the intricacies of memory and dream and their roles as active and passive participants in the mind’s complex perception and storage of past events.  Memory, the active partner, and dream its mysterious counterpart in the subconscious.  For in dreaming, connections with lost memories can be rekindled and can interact without the categorizations of the mind impressing order upon them.

	This piece contains four large sections bookended by an introduction and coda.  The first three sections each represent a recollection of the same memory.  With each active attempt at re-living the event, a new schema--with which to fit the memory in--is explored.  For all of this effort, the memory only grows more and more distorted.  It is not until active attempts to force memory are abandoned and a passive dream state arises that the memory can once again rise in its purest form.  Though still a shadow of its former self, the shapes can be seen through a glass, darkly—dancing in the innermost recesses of the mind only reached when all ties with the conscious world are forfeited.  

-Lucas Marshall Smith


...through a glass, darkly... (2014-15) for chamber orchestra

Ryan de Ryke, baritone
Tomoko Ono, piano

Music by Lucas Marshall Smith
Poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Text:
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white.
Slow to world-greetings, quick with its "O, list,"
When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst
I could not wear here, plainer to my sight,
Than that first kiss. The second passed in height
The first, and sought the forehead, and half missed,
Half falling on the hair. O beyond meed!
That was the chrism of love, which love's own crown,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, "My love, my own."

Notes: The Truth About Love is a song cycle focused around one of the most written about and discussed topics in human history—love.  Each movement is a setting of a different poem by various poets on the topic of love and each deals with love seen from a different angle.  The movements do share motivic and pitch material, but are not necessarily intended to be seen as the progression of one specific relationship.  Instead, snippets of many relationships are explored and the shared material between movements emphasizes the common threads that unite all persons in love.  


I. Sonnet 38 from "The Truth About Love" (2013-14) for baritone and piano

Premiered on September 20th, 2015 by the Heartland Sings Chorale under the direction of Maestro Robert Nance. The Heartland Sings Chorale is stationed out of Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

The text from Lux Aeterna comes from the Latin Requiem Mass.  A translation is given below:

In Latin: 
Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, 
cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. 
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; 
et lux perpetua luceat eis.

English Translation: 
May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord,
with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful
Grant them eternal rest, O Lord,
and may everlasting light shine upon them.

Lux Aeterna incorporates a type of singing known as overtone singing, derived from that of the Tuvan tradition. In order to achieve this, the singers modulate between different vowels and adjust the shape of their oral cavity to create a filter, highlighting overtones (or partials in the harmonic spectrum) above the note they are singing. This combined with the juxtaposition of closely spaced and widely spaced chords is meant to to evoke a sense of expansiveness and a glimpse into the eternal.

-Lucas Marshall Smith

Lux Aeterna (2013) for SSAATTBB Chorus and Solo Quartet

Program Notes:

In Greek mythology Talos was a giant, bronze automaton forged by Hephaistos and sent by Zeus to protect Europa on the island of Krete.  Talos patrolled the island daily, driving pirates and invaders from the shore with volleys of rocks or a fiery death-embrace.  According to the Argonautica, Talos attempted to prevent Jason and the Argonauts from landing on Krete with the newly acquired Golden Fleece.  Unable to land, Jason called on the enchantress Medea, who summoned spirits of death to torment Talos.  In a confused state, Talos was finally defeated when he scraped his ankle on a sharp rock, allowing his life-giving icor to drain from his veins.  Weakened, Talos fell with a tremendous crash and died.  Talos (2014) was inspired by this general program.

Talos (2014) was released on the University of Illinois EMS CD “Transient Images” (2015) and has been presented at the SEAMUS conference at Virginia Tech (March 2015) as well as the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival (June 2015).  

Talos (2014) for Stereo Fixed Media

Performed April 25th, 2016 by the Aural Skills Chorale--a group of volunteer freshman aural skills students at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana under the direction of Lucas Marshall Smith.

Performers:
Soprano: Carissa Yau, Victoria Tompkins, Maggie Wolfe, Phoebe Nah
Alto: Elizabeth Easley, Maddie Horvat, Alison LeBeda, Miranda Molina, Elizabeth Gartman,
Tenor: Elizabeth Kim, Jiaying Liang, Simon Tiffin, Thereza Lituma, Sofia Imbimbo
Bass: Andrew Magosky, Terrence Lo, Dakota Wayne, Jerry Baffour, Deleon Rocquemore
Conductor: Lucas Marshall Smith


Text:

Flowers that bloom in summer now are gone.
Once so fair their fragrance warmed the air.
Flowers that bloomed so fair, 
The winter's cold doth haste thee away so soon.
Stay oh stay and share they fleeting beauty with my love,
My love and I.




Flowers (rev. 2016) for SSAB Choir

Performed May 3rd, 2016 at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Marla Moore, soprano
Larisa Chasanov, piano

Willow 
Poem by Anna Akhmatova
Translated into English by Judith Hemschemeyer

And I grew up in patterned tranquility,
In the cool nursery of the young century.
And the voice of man was not dear to me,
But the voice of the wind I could understand.
I liked burdocks and nettles,
But best of all the silver willow.
And, obligingly, it lived
With me all my life; its weeping branches
Fanned my insomnia with dreams.
And—strange!—I have outlived it.
There the stump stands; with strange voices
Other willows are conversing 
Under our, under those skies.
And I am silent…As if a brother had died.

	This poetry by Anna Akhmatova paints a beautifully tragic scene—touching largely on elements of memory, nostalgia, dream, and loss.  The speaker begins by recalling a placid childhood in which nature provided more understanding and healing than that of humankind.  For whatever reasons, the speaker could not understand the actions of men, but instead felt comfort and solace in the whispering branches of a willow tree—a tree that she felt watched over her at night and soothed her with a gentle lullaby from its whispering branches.  

It is not until the last five lines of the poem that we understand why the speaker has been moved to recall these childhood memories; she has returned, presumably as an adult after years of being away, to her childhood home—to the willow tree that helped raise her—only to find that it is gone.  The tree has been cut down and instantly a sting of pain, of loss cuts through her.  Suddenly her source of healing as a child has been cut off and she must find a way to push on—much like one who has lost a close relative, even a brother.

This vivid imagery spoke to me and I tried to create a musical environment in which all of the complex emotional states in the poem could be explored.  Although very little action takes place—arguable none—the speaker’s inner turmoil is staggering.  

The piece was written specifically for soprano Marla Moore.  The work requires a great deal of technique, both emotionally and dramatically.  Having seen both of those from Marla, I knew that her fluid coloratura and vast emotional pallet would fit the character of the music and the speaker perfectly.  

-Lucas Marshall Smith


Willow (2016) for soprano and piano

Performed April 6th, 2016 at the RED NOTE New Music Festival at Illinois State University in Normal, IL.  The performing ensemble was ENSEMBLE MISE-EN, a new music group operating out of New York.

Maria Johnson, flute
Yumi Ito, clarinet
Mark Broschinsky, trombone
Yumi Suehiro, piano
Molly Germer, violin
Ryan Runyon, double bass
Moon Young Ha, conductor

Program notes:

	The title Alkaline Dreams refers to a group of elements known as the alkali metals.  These metals (such as lithium, sodium, potassium, etc.) are highly reactive because they have only one electron in their outer shell.  In order to become more stable, alkali metals readily lose this othermost electron, forming cations with charge +1.  This process of losing an electron will always require a release or absorption of energy to break a bond and form a new one with another element.
	In Alkaline Dreams, I attempt to sonically capture these unstable tendencies.   The release of energy due to the loss of a valence electron is represented by a flurry of notes that, although short-lived, has a dramatic impact on the element and the music that follows.  As Alkaline Dreams progresses, more and more reactive metals are explored and various aspects of the reactions can be magnified, slowed, or even frozen in time and observed from various vantage points.  

--Lucas Marshall Smith


Alkaline Dreams (2016) for mixed sextet

Performed on July 24th, 2016 at Christ Lutheran Church in Zionsville, IN

Ashlee Bickley, mezzo soprano
Alex McCrory, bassoon

Longing
Poetry by Matthew Arnold

Come to me in my dreams, and then 
By day I shall be well again! 
For so the night will more than pay 
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times, 
A messenger from radiant climes, 
And smile on thy new world, and be 
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth, 
Come now, and let me dream it truth, 
And part my hair, and kiss my brow, 
And say, My love why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then 
By day I shall be well again! 
For so the night will more than pay 
The hopeless longing of the day.

David Watkins Benefit Recital

Longing (2008, rev. 2015) for Mezzo Soprano and Bassoon

Program notes:

	Utterance, for 8-channel fixed media, combines a variety of sound sources prominent in both western (trumpet, clave, and ukulele sounds) as well as non-western (African djembe and shakers, Native American water drums, and Tuvan throat singing techniques) music making.  These musical identities, however, are not the only sources used.  Everyday objects and sounds are used equally and treated as motivic material, creating a vast array of sounds and environments impossible to capture in the real world.  It is in this imaginary space that a new culture emerges from the building blocks of our combined musical heritages.  A culture that is summoned, materializes, and dissipates just as quickly as it is formed. 

-Lucas Marshall Smith

Water Music

Hide and Seek (2018) for Mixed Chorus (C4)

Lucas Marshall Smith (b.1989) 
Education: Bowling Green State University (BM, 2012) ; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (MM 2014, DMA 2024)
Teachers:  Burton Beerman, Philipp Blume, Carlos Carrillo, Christopher Dietz, Erin Gee, Mihai Popean, Andrea Reinkemeyer, Marilyn Shrude, Stephen Taylor, Reynold Tharp
Electroacoustic composition with Elainie Lillios and Scott Wyatt

Contact composer at smithlm77@gmail.com

Lucas Marshall Smith

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