Who will see us, dead? 
Our first mother will wait for you, 
dear brother, with open arms.
You'll bounce, cherubic, on cotton
candy clouds. 

God rewards? 
Most certainly; God rewards
wing-beat by wing-beat
with white chocolate
shavings, shed.

In this first movement, childlike innocence is explored through a light tonal palette. Both the harp and flute combine melodic fragments at their discretion, dancing around each other as the soprano sings from the top of a bed of sound.

“Aftermath” the poem was written in response to Louise Gluck's poem, “Gretel in Darkness.”  Gluck's poem interacts with the old fairytale Hansel and Gretel, in which two children are lured into a house made of candy by an evil witch who wishes to cook them and eat them.  Gluck explores Gretel's psychological agony over her murder of the witch; "Aftermath" expands on Gluck's work, considering the possibility of all of Gretel's fears coming true when she realizes that she is never free from her past, or from the actions that haunt her—and because of that, she is never truly free from the witch. The music reflects the wild emotions of Gretel, going from a light and airy first movement to a twelve-tone finale with sharp dissonances and metallic harp sound effects. Much of the accompaniment is improvised in the spirit of Terry Riley's "In C."

"Aftermath" was commissioned by the Druid City Ensemble in association with the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and was performed and recorded by the Druid City Ensemble.

Text by Bailey Brotherton

The Druid City Ensemble:
Dr. Sarah Crocker, harp
Dr. Whitney O'Neal, flute
Dr. Dawn Neely, soprano


I. Bright | Aftermath

Barred from evil women, 
imprisoned by a heavy
ball and chain? Not hardly.
Father will fall into bliss, a
whore's crooked candy cane arms.

Who remembers? 
Not Hansel, soaring in peppermint
skies. Nor Father, wrapped
up in his thousand bits of honey.
But I do. 

Hell smells like burnt sugar, 
umber-frozen over crème brulee, 
and the gluey, viscous heaps
of eviscerated gelatin.
And she is here.
She stalks me in the night,
hunting, with that sick gleeful smile
she wore when we first met.
Each step, and a burn-blister
pops, oozing icing and memories.

In this second movement, unease replaces what should be lightness and joy following the death of the witch. The harp strings together fragments, like in the first movement, but the flute now accents the soprano, creating a strange, sticky place where Gretel's mind has gone.

“Aftermath” the poem was written in response to Louise Gluck's poem, “Gretel in Darkness.” Gluck's poem interacts with the old fairytale Hansel and Gretel, in which two children are lured into a house made of candy by an evil witch who wishes to cook them and eat them. Gluck explores Gretel's psychological agony over her murder of the witch; "Aftermath" expands on Gluck's work, considering the possibility of all of Gretel's fears coming true when she realizes that she is never free from her past, or from the actions that haunt her—and because of that, she is never truly free from the witch. The music reflects the wild emotions of Gretel, going from a light and airy first movement to a twelve-tone finale with sharp dissonances and metallic harp sound effects. Much of the accompaniment is improvised in the spirit of Terry Riley's "In C."

"Aftermath" was commissioned by the Druid City Ensemble in association with the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and was performed and recorded by the Druid City Ensemble.

Text by Bailey Brotherton

The Druid City Ensemble:
Dr. Sarah Crocker, harp
Dr. Whitney O'Neal, flute
Dr. Dawn Neely, soprano


II. Dreamlike | Aftermath

Crooning, she reaches out to me,
gnarled fingers beckoning me
back into the darkness.
Peppermint lip gloss glistens, and
I know she is coming to eat my heart!

In pitch black I lay still, too weak
to thrash, to give voice to my fear.
Suddenly, I find her lying beside me, 
a sick, sinful mother here to wipe
the sweet fever-sweat from my brow.

Now, she turns to me in the
night, creeping talons burning
up my spine, each an oven we never
met, and each a licorice slash for
every time I drew her blood.

In this third movement, we hit rock bottom. The flute slowly works its way once through a "tone row," where all twelve notes in the chromatic scale are played exactly once. The soprano sings this same tone row several times, shifting her starting pitch following each pause. This dissonant tone landscape is accented by harp sound effects, strung together from fragments as in the first two movements.

“Aftermath” the poem was written in response to Louise Gluck's poem, “Gretel in Darkness.” Gluck's poem interacts with the old fairytale Hansel and Gretel, in which two children are lured into a house made of candy by an evil witch who wishes to cook them and eat them. Gluck explores Gretel's psychological agony over her murder of the witch; "Aftermath" expands on Gluck's work, considering the possibility of all of Gretel's fears coming true when she realizes that she is never free from her past, or from the actions that haunt her—and because of that, she is never truly free from the witch. The music reflects the wild emotions of Gretel, going from a light and airy first movement to a twelve-tone finale with sharp dissonances and metallic harp sound effects. Much of the accompaniment is improvised in the spirit of Terry Riley's "In C."

"Aftermath" was commissioned by the Druid City Ensemble in association with the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and was performed and recorded by the Druid City Ensemble.

Text by Bailey Brotherton

The Druid City Ensemble:
Dr. Sarah Crocker, harp
Dr. Whitney O'Neal, flute
Dr. Dawn Neely, soprano

III. Spectral | Aftermath

In this final, wordless movement, the flute and harp revisit the tonal material from the first movement. Will Gretel ever be free from the witch's grasp? This reprisal is intentionally ambiguous - it could be taken as a sign of childlike innocence and purity, or as corrupted by what came before it.

“Aftermath” the poem was written in response to Louise Gluck's poem, “Gretel in Darkness.” Gluck's poem interacts with the old fairytale Hansel and Gretel, in which two children are lured into a house made of candy by an evil witch who wishes to cook them and eat them. Gluck explores Gretel's psychological agony over her murder of the witch; "Aftermath" expands on Gluck's work, considering the possibility of all of Gretel's fears coming true when she realizes that she is never free from her past, or from the actions that haunt her—and because of that, she is never truly free from the witch. The music reflects the wild emotions of Gretel, going from a light and airy first movement to a twelve-tone finale with sharp dissonances and metallic harp sound effects. Much of the accompaniment is improvised in the spirit of Terry Riley's "In C."

"Aftermath" was commissioned by the Druid City Ensemble in association with the Birmingham Art Music Alliance, and was performed and recorded by the Druid City Ensemble.

Text by Bailey Brotherton

The Druid City Ensemble:
Dr. Sarah Crocker, harp
Dr. Whitney O'Neal, flute
Dr. Dawn Neely, soprano

IV. Reprisal | Aftermath

Sylvan Spring is a work for concert band in constant motion, with constant compression and rarefaction of rhythmic structures to create a strong and energetic pulse. I was inspired by the modern band music of Samuel Hazo and Frank Ticheli, in addition to shape-note hymns from my own childhood. Combining these two things - modern, sleek composition with old, simple hymns - speaks to my own musical life: I learned much of my style from studying the hymnals and liturgical works in the libraries of local churches. Sylvan Spring is the winner of the 2015 University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival Composition Contest. Recorded at the Huntsville High School Auditorium in Huntsville, AL by Steve Johnston. Sylvan Spring was performed by the Twickenham Winds, a community band under the direction of Dr. David Spencer.

Note: there are a few small technical errors in this recording. To hear a computer realization of this piece, listen here: https://soundcloud.com/pendergrassdrew/sylvan-spring-midi

Sylvan Spring

Sylvan Spring is a work for concert band in constant motion, with constant compression and rarefaction of rhythmic structures to create a strong and energetic pulse. I was inspired by the modern band music of Samuel Hazo and Frank Ticheli, in addition to shape-note hymns from my own childhood. Combining these two things - modern, sleek composition with old, simple hymns - speaks to my own musical life: I learned much of my style from studying the hymnals and liturgical works in the libraries of local churches. Sylvan Spring is the winner of the 2015 University of Tennessee Contemporary Music Festival Composition Contest.

Note: this is a computer realization of the piece. To hear a live recording, listen here: https://soundcloud.com/pendergrassdrew/sylvan-spring

Sylvan Spring (MIDI)

In daily life, billions of cells in the human body die in a highly-regulated, pre-programmed process called apoptosis. Apoptosis, for melodica, bongos, vibraphone, and toy piano, covers, over four movements, four steps in the process of cell death, with the sounds of each section inspired by the rhythm of the words that title the movement. The piece is characterized by the tight, decentralized control of the musicians on stage: In each of the four movements, a different one of the four performers takes on the role of conductor, giving audio signals to drive the music forward. The entire performance is improvised from small "fragments" of music, designed to create a certain atmosphere, but the structure of the content is completely at the discretion of the performers and conductor. These counterbalanced elements of control and decentralization, randomness and order, mark daily processes of life and the structure of Apoptosis. In this recording, the bongos have been replaced with a simplified drum set.

Drew Pendergrass

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