Name: Snowlight Sketch for sinfonietta (2016) by Phil Taylor
Duration: 4 min 10 s
Description: Musicians of the Wellesley Composers Conference. James Baker, conductor. Live performance, 7/23/16.

Stamps Auditorium, October 24th
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Contralto: Rehanna Thelwell
Conductor: Jerry Blackstone
University of Michigan Chamber Choir




Virginia is based on Virginia Woolf´s suicide letter to her husband, dated in May 1941. The idea for this work began when I found this letter four years ago while looking for information about Virginia. I was impressed and intrigued by her writing and artistic personality after reading Mrs Dalloway and The Waves. The letter shocked me and I immediately decided I wanted to write this piece, but this project had to stay in my mind for years until I decided to score it for choir and soloist. 
I couldn’t help but feel compassion for such a talented and thoughtful artist whose suffering would eventually lead her to this final, fatal decision. I felt emotionally compelled by how her art acts as a reflection of these intense emotions. As empathy through art can be a strong mechanism to develop our understanding of one another, I wanted to explore this letter through musical means. 
The contralto, with her dark, low registered vocalizations, is then echoed in the choir through the repetition of the text and direct musical repetition. The use of repeated pitches, glissandis and dense textures serve to create rising and falling tensions through masses of sound. At times, the text is repeated incessantly, eventually losing meaning and coherence amidst the texture of the sound. 
The full letter is below. 

Dearest,

I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would 
have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. 
I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.

Virginia (2015) for Alto and SATB Choir

For solo female voice. Composed for and premiered by Nina Dante at Constellation, Chicago.

Text adapted from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen:


The sun was about to go down when she heard a rushing sound and saw six swans fly in through the window. Suddenly, their feathers came off like shirts and the girl recognized them as her brothers. She was happy and crawled out from beneath the bed. Crying, the little sister said, "Can you not be saved?" "They only way” they answered, “is for you to not speak or to laugh for six years, and in that time you would have to sew together six little shirts out of daisies for us. And if a single word were to leave your lips, all your work would be lost."
After the brothers had said this, they turned back into swans and flew out the window.
So the little girl climbed up a tree in the middle of the woods and began to sew. She could not speak with anyone, and she had no desire to laugh. She sat there, looking only at her work for one year, two years, three years, four years….

_______________________________________________

The old woman said, "My child, what have you done? Why did you pick the twelve white flowers? Those were your brothers, and now they’ve been transformed into ravens forever."

“The only way to redeem them is for you to remain silent for seven whole years. And If you speak a single word in the final hour of the seven years your brothers will be killed by that one word."
Then the girl climbed up a tall tree where she sat without speaking or laughing. And sat there year after year…

______________________________________________

“But I must be paid” said the witch  “And the price I demand for my draught is your voice, the best thing you possess”

‘but don’t worry, with your beautiful form, your graceful walk, and your expressive eyes; surely you can enchant a man’s heart. 

Then she cut off the mermaid’s tongue so she would ever speak again.




Tell, Monologue for Solo Female Voice

Musicians of the Wellesley Composers Conference. James Baker, conductor. Live performance, 7/23/16.

Snowlight Sketch for sinfonietta (2016)

"speak through speaking" is a work inspired by Peter Handke's play, Kaspar, and specifically by its protagonist's recurring line: "I want to be someone, like someone else once was."

The composition's starting point is a rough sonification of myself reading this sentence, and deals with the resultant sound in ways similar to how Handke's play uses words—always aiming at an analysis of reality through different kinds of repetition.

The work is written and dedicated to POING.

instrumentation: alto saxophone, accordion (bayan), and contrabass

duration: 7 minutes

premiere performance: Musiikin aika Festival (Time of Music Festival); Viitasaari, Finland; July 09 2017.

More info:
http://igor-santos.com/speak-through-speaking-2017

Snowlight Sketch for sinfonietta (2016)

Phil Taylor

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