Still Point

"The Harvest of the Amulet of the Deer" (2019-20) for mezzo-soprano and sinfonietta
by Patrick Holcomb
Text by Soleil Davíd

Liz Culpepper, mezzo-soprano
Indiana University New Music Ensemble
David Dzubay, conductor

Premiere performance on March 5, 2020
Auer Hall, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

"The Harvest of the Amulet of the Deer" © 2020 by N. Patrick Holcomb. All rights reserved.

Program Note:

The Harvest of the Amulet of the Deer (2019-20) is my setting of Soleil Davíd’s “Harvest of a Deer Amulet” and my second setting of her poetry. My first collaboration with Soleil, the art song Superbloom that I wrote on her “Seeing the Superbloom in Death Valley, California,” earned me the 2019 Georgina Joshi Composition Commission Award to write a new piece for solo voice and the Indiana University New Music Ensemble. The group would perform the piece as a part of their “Indiana Remixed” program, which would feature works by Indiana-based composers in a celebration of the school at its bicentennial. Since Soleil is also a graduate student at IU, it seemed fitting to ask her to write another poem for me to set.

In Soleil’s own words, “Harvest of a Deer Amulet” “takes elements of Philippine folklore and makes up rituals and is also maybe about domesticity and being a woman.” The mezzo-soprano soloist becomes the speaker of the poem: a shamaness who alone must undergo an intense and intricate ritual for protection from the oncoming global catastrophe. The piece begins with the instrumental Invocation (Prologue), in which our heroine calls upon her matrilineal line of those who toiled before her, and a chorus of voices responds. The First Incantation follows the Invocation; here, we are introduced to the shamaness as she frantically prepares for the ceremony. Next, in the Second Incantation, we follow the speaker as she “swim[s] seal-skinned in the company of whale sharks” amid the sounds of waves and seagulls. In a moment of darkness, she contemplates the stress of the weight on her shoulders and wonders if her actions are futile. Afterwards, the Third Incantation finds our heroine in her home, painting and cooking. Although she is able to distract herself at first, the increasingly prominent sounds coming in through the open windows call her back outside. Finally, in the Ritual (Epilogue), the speaker reveals in a dissociative trance the violent and horrifying act that culminates the ritual in a moonlit field amid the rustling of wind in the bushes.

At its heart, Soleil’s poem is a story about the search for protection on a suffering Earth. In his program notes for the thematically similar piece, An Idyll for the Misbegotten (Images III), George Crumb describes flute and percussion as “those instruments which most powerfully evoke the voice of nature.” Following suit, Harvest features the flutist and the two percussionists (with the addition of the only instrument older to the human species: the voice). The work begins and ends with alto flute solos (derived from a vocal melody in the middle of the piece); and the First, Second, and Third Incantations feature “skin” (membrane), metallic, and earthen (wood and clay) percussion, respectively. In this way, I hope to pay homage to Crumb, who has had a profound influence on me and my music.

The Harvest of the Amulet of the Deer was premiered by the IU New Music Ensemble on my last concert as Assistant Director of the group. I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to David Dzubay for his support throughout my time at IU, to the musicians for their unending dedication, to Liz Culpepper for her hard work and enthusiasm, to the Georgina Joshi Foundation for giving me the opportunity to work with the group beyond my assistantship duties, and to Soleil Davíd for her flexibility and eagerness to collaborate.

Still Point

Paul Berlinsky

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