Listen for Chorus and Instrumental Sextet (Perusal Score)

Program Notes

Most people want to be heard and want to be loved, and we are usually better at talking than listening. We are often so immersed in ourselves that we not only forget to listen to others in a meaningful, effective way, but also to the world around us. With that in mind, Listen is about listening to each other and the world around us more deeply, especially with respect to our environment. In that sense, this piece could have been titled “Deep Listening,” but since this work is meant to be more a call to action than an alliteration of a musical concept, I felt that Listen was a more appropriate title. Listen uses a tapestry of quotes from various, well-known sources, both ancient and contemporary, that are about or related to the environment. My main goal, through this piece, is to create a musical call to action, encourage listening, and help to raise awareness about our environment and the natural world around us.

Listen is scored for choir (3 members playing Tingshas or crotales) and chamber ensemble, consisting of a flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and piano, and was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Ember Choir, Deborah Simpkin King, music director and conductor in honor of their 25th anniversary.

– RP

Instrumentation

Choir and instrumental sextet (flute, Bb clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, piano)

Percussion Instrumentation

vibraphone, 4 concert tom-toms, concert bass drum, medium suspended cymbal, large tam-tam, Mark Tree (bar chimes), medium and large wood blocks, small and medium triangles

Note: 3 choir members play Tingshas, pitched E6, F6, and G6. Crotales played with mallets may be substituted.

Performance Notes

For the singers’ starting positions at the beginning of the piece, it may be necessary to adjust their positions relative to the size of the space and move them farther forward, and even to the middle of the space or toward the front, but still in the aisles and left, center, and right. It is strongly recommended that this work be performed in a space with left, center, and right aisles, but if there is no center aisle, the altos may be positioned on the left side with the tenors.

Perusal

World Premiere

Ember

Deborah Simpkin King, Director and Conductor with American Modern Ensemble

St. John’s in the Village, New York, NY, May 21, 2022

Our Lady of Sorrows Church, South Orange, NJ, May 22, 2022

Duration: ca. 20'00"

Listen.

Listen!

We need to listen.

Are we listening?

Please listen.

Listen to our ancestors.

Listen to the words of our distant ancestors. Listen to the animals, to the trees, to the sky, to the oceans, to the birds, to the insects, to each other! Just listen.

We are watching, not watching. Seeing, not seeing. We are thinking, not thinking. Feeling, not feeling. Listening. Not listening.

What did we think was going to happen? What right do they have to destroy the world?

“Our House Is on Fire” – Greta Thunberg “They are as children, playing with their toys in a house on fire.” – Gautama Buddha

All around the world: America, the Arctic, Siberia, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Australia. Each and every country will suffer. Each and every continent will burn.

“A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt “We cannot say we love the land and then take steps to destroy it for use by future generations.” – John Paul II “The environment is where we all meet... it is the one thing all of us share.” – Lady Bird Johnson “The earth is what we all have in common.” – Wendell Berry

It begins with this: the climate is warming, the world’s great ice sheets are melting, and the water is rising.

“The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their roaring.” – Psalm 93:3 Will we recognize what is here when it is not here anymore?

Every factory, Every generator, Every vehicle, Every incinerator, Every power plant. The smog, the soot, The gray sky overhead, This should have told us all we needed to know.

Listen.

We need to listen.

We are listening. Please listen.

Listen to our children. Listen to our children’s children.

Listen to the animals, the trees, the sky, the oceans, the birds, each other... Just listen.

The text for Listen consists of words by Robert Paterson, quotes from authors that are in the public domain, the title of the book Our House in on Fire by Greta Thunberg, and a quote reprinted with permission from the following source:

Copyright © 1977 by Wendell Berry, from The Unsettling of America. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint Press.

Perusal

We have forgotten how to be good guests, how to walk lightly on the earth as its other creatures do.

“Each morning, we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” – Buddha “Keep close to Nature’s heart... and break clear away... climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.” – John Muir

Perusal