[of desire (2021)

for four SATB voices and two percussionists

Program Note:

[ of desire brings together settings of Sappho translated by Anne Carson in If Not, Winter, and response fragments by contemporary queer poet, composer, and pianist, Kevin Madison. I have long identified with and admired Sappho’s fragments as a prominent historical artifact depicting same sex desire. While the fragments are undoubtedly archaic, their fragmented form, brevity, and lack of context allows them a unique flexibility and timeless singularity. In my setting of Carson’s translations, I amplify this time bending quality by juxtaposing them with response fragments that address issues of queerness in contemporary life. As the two sets of fragments interact and weave together, a time crunch occurs, bridging between past and present and illuminating all that lies betwixt and between. This time crunch is musically depicted through the employment of several textual treatments, such as polytextual counterpoint and text abstraction which are juxtaposed by traditional vocal writing, chorale, and art song settings. The collision of traditional and contemporary compositional approaches furthers the emphasis on the clash of past and present, making this time warp audible.

Carson employs the use of brackets in her translations of Sappho’s fragments, describing them as “an aesthetic gesture toward the papyrological* event rather than an accurate record of it” (Carson, xi). It is with this spirit I have attempted to write this piece, with emphasis given to the empty space, or as Carson aptly puts it, to “give an impression of missing matter” (Carson, xi).

*papyrological is the term Carson uses to refer to the material condition of the papyrus on which Sappho’s texts survive.

[ of desire was written for members of the Ekmeles Vocal Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion as part of a collaboration through the Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition at the University of Chicago.

Cover Image: Composite (pillars of craft and industry), a lithograph by Emily Harter, 2018 

Awards: This score was awarded a 2022 Broadcast Music Industry Young Composer Award