Frank THE EDGE OF EVERYTHING

ISSUU Gabriela Version Lena Frank for Perusal Only text by

J. Drew Lanham dramaturgy by

Gabriela Lena Frank

The Edge of Everything: Elegy for Rachel Louise Carson for narrator and string quartet

Score

G. Schirmer, Inc. New York, NY

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

Gabriela Lena Frank text by

J. DrewVersion Lanham ISSUU Lena Frank for Gabriela Perusal Only dramaturgy by

The Edge of Everything: Elegy for Rachel Louise Carson for narrator and string quartet

Score Commissioned by The 92nd Street Y, New York and Washington Performing Arts for the Pacifica Quartet, and for the Fourth Annual Ruth Bader Ginsburg Memorial Concert in Washington, D.C. Text to The Edge of Everything: Elegy for Rachel Louise Carson by J. Drew Lanham was sponsored by Ronni LaCroute.

First performed by the Pacifica Quartet and Sigourney Weaver on April 10, 2026 at the The 92nd Street Y in New York, and on April 12, 2026 at Washington Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. duration ca. 10 minutes

G. Schirmer, Inc. New York, NY

TEXT I. I have lived on the edge and somehow not fallen over it, except headlong in love with wildness, as the sea knows my heart deep enough to hold it safe.

Too far for those that stuffed their pockets with death, making it so that I could not rest.

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

Great whales heave barnacled backs to heaven...

Shoals of menhaden fish, black as ink, write their fates in the waves. Marsh birds applaud from the reeds. Moon snails, on foot that is stomach, creep through an abysmal bottom we will never see but will each become.

Who would believe, conceive in their wildest dreaming that I,… a Pennsylvania girl born of hill and valley farm, would find the seashore to be more home than barn, warm house, or any four walls at all? Who would believe that I, a girl who traded milking time for tide’s never-ending ebb and flow, would become a biologist?

A biologist of oceans and a challenger of what would poison it?

II. There were those who would not see my dreams worthy, nor hear my voice worthy of hearing; women were supposed to be silent. But my words flowed on river to sea. Paragraphs became protest, the waves pounding on rocks, wearing them down to sand.

Imagine this: The privilege of giving voice to the robin whose songs fade with the crop dusters vulturing shadow, of giving voice to the lone tanager in the sycamore tree who cannot find a partner, of giving voice to the pelicans on their way to better fishing grounds only to find barren waters.

III. Once, I signed my name only with the two letters R and L, hiding my being... But the truth was too loud, too true, and so, I claimed my full name: “Rachel Louise Carson.” For Mother Atlantic insisted I put pen to paper. She insisted I magnify Her voice above the growing storm of crimes against all the wild that remains.

This perhaps a deed too far for those in power who would poison the earth and claim progress.

Congress questioned my courage, and chemical empires spat lies, but I had only a typewriter and the truth science told me. Blacklisted by greedstarved men, I would be myself without apology.

“Rachel Louise Carson. Rachel. Louise. Carson.”

IV. And so, years passed: I lived my life by tide high and low, the stillness of slack in between those edges of extreme. Looking into the tide pool, alongside starfish, dogwinkles and sea urchins, I saw myself reflected, yes, but more and more, I saw myself the same.

The same as every life breathing through gills or skin. Whether swimming or creeping, we are saltwater kin.

Years passed: Who was I? A woman always on deadline writing on life’s wild lessons for us, and for wild beings, too.

Would we survive our own arrogant march, its war against ourselves spilled over to the Earth? But by what means? As nature intended? Or by human negligence ignored until the birds would sing no more?

Until the sea around us would be empty. Until the tide pools became lifeless puddles.

I worked by Time and tide, Time and tide!

I worked by Time and tide, Time and tide!

Word by word, line by line!

Word by word, line by line!

I worked until not even Spring herself could be silenced.

I worked, I worked!

To denunciate the poisons, the poisons seen as magic potions, magic potions rather than the creator of the killing fields, of death magnified, of the harm of a cancer, a cancer metastasized.

The same blight that would take my life.

I warned of this!

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I warned of this.

And… it found me first.

It found me first.

V. “The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place,” and the tidal pools hold lessons if we will learn.

Imagine peering into the pools, the light in diamond shards from a sun millions of miles distant causing us to squint. Cold in an offshore wind, we warm together: starfish, and tiny unnamed fish, and moon snails grazing emerald green algae, and hermit crabs carrying mobile homes on backs.

Our lives teeter between heaven and earth, whether feathered, furred, or finned. We are saltwater kin...

I lived believing love to be the currency of empathy: “It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”

Lift your gaze… and let your sight wander from barnacles and welks and see the blue sky where terns send sharp cries to cut the murmur of tide’s ebb and flow.

That is our world. Same air, same water, same soil, same earth, same faith.

—J. Drew Lanham

PROGRAM NOTE

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Before she became the woman who changed how the world understood its own fragility, Rachel Louise Carson was a wordsmith whose ear for cadence and image drew readers into the breathing yet imperiled world she loved. Her sea trilogy — Under the Sea-Wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea — won a National Book Award and made her the foremost science writer in America, lauded for both her rigor and poetic voice.

She understood what too many still resist: that the most faithful rendering of the natural world demands both the microscope and the poem.

She was also a woman who had to fight to be heard. Early in her career she signed her articles “R. L. Carson,” obscuring her gender so that readers would take her seriously.

When she finally claimed her full name — Rachel Louise Carson — it was an act of defiance as much as identity. J. Drew Lanham captures this moment in his text with the incantatory insistence of her name, a spell against erasure: “Rachel Louise Carson.

Rachel. Louise. Carson.”

And then there is the bitter irony of her death. Carson’s Silent Spring warned the world that the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides was poisoning the earth and its inhabitants, including us. She linked these poisons to the slow unraveling of bodies exposed to what industry called progress. She was right, and she was also dying. Breast cancer had metastasized as she wrote, and she hid her illness so that chemical companies could not weaponize it against her. She wore a wig as she argued before Congress and died in 1964 at the age of 56. She was taken by the very blight she had spent her final years naming.

I wanted the text for this elegy to come from someone for whom Carson’s work was not simply admirable but personally urgent — someone who lives at the intersection of science and poetry, of witness and advocacy. Drew is a MacArthur Fellow, an ornithologist, and the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature. He is a Black man in America who writes on what it means to love the natural world from a body that the natural world’s gatekeepers have not always welcomed. When he channels Rachel Carson’s first person in this text — her wonder at tide pools and her fury at poisoned fields — you feel one witness calling across time to another.

In setting Drew’s text, I worked as dramaturg alongside my role as composer, shaping the words so that the narrator has dramatic and musical room to inhabit Carson as a character, building from quiet wonder into defiance, especially the climax where Carson’s tireless labor and her cancer converge: “I warned of this. I warned of this! And … it found me first.” The narrator is a full member of the ensemble, a fifth voice whose silences are as composed as the quartet’s, whose breath and timing shape the music.

The quartet, in turn, is no backdrop. In passages where the narrator speaks freely, the quartet answers and comments, yet also falls silent where a word needs space to land.

And in the work’s most intense pages, the instruments surge forward on their own with their own communicative power.

I write this from the hills of rural northern California, where I live with my husband on land we tend with great care and not a little anxiety. We are in fire country. We have watched neighbors lose homes, watched smoke turn our sky the color of rust, and stored thousand gallons of water against catastrophe. We tend our forest, grow food on terraces, keep chickens, plant native plants and trees, forage and process acorns in the indigenous way, and try to live in some version of the reciprocal relationship with the

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earth that Carson defended. Her warnings are not academic to me. They are the view from my kitchen window — the drying forests, the unpredictable seasons, the insurance companies fleeing, and above else, the unchecked human appetite.

Drew quotes words that Carson wrote near the end of her life: “It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.” She wrote from love — fierce and specific — for a world worth saving. This elegy carries her urgency and her hope. Drew ends the text with her poignant words, “Same air, same water, same soil, same earth, same faith.”

These are an invocation, a reminder that we share one world and one fate with every creature that breathes, swims, creeps, or flies.

The Edge of Everything was commissioned by the 92nd Street Y in New York and Washington Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. The work’s text, by J. Drew Lanham,was commissioned by Ronni LaCroute.

—Gabriela Lena Frank

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

The Edge of Everything: Elegy for Rachel Louise Carson

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

J. Drew Lanham

Gabriela Lena Frank (2026)

I have lived on the edge and somehow not fallen over it, except headlong in love with wildness, as the sea knows my heart deep enough to hold it safe.

Narrator

I Violin II

Violoncello

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           dolce, rubato        

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alla misura

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Viola

Nar.

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senza misura

molto portamento

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        

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                        

Copyright © 2026 by G. Schirmer, Inc. (ASCAP) New York, NY International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved.

Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this publication is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution.

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Property of: G. Schirmer Rental Library Old. Rt. 17M, Chester, NY 10918 SUPPLIED ON LOAN ONLY

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8

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

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 

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       yet  gentle sonorous

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         gentle yet sonorous pizz.

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    

       

cue Nar. poco arpegg. 

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Great whales heave barnacled backs to heaven...

Tempo Primo  = 44–48 senza misura

                   

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Tempo Segundo  = 60–63 Fluid, rubato

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               yet  gentle sonorous   pizz.

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       

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

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Proceed to m. 19 quickly after “heaven...”

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ISSUU Version  for Perusal Only        

19 Nar.

...Shoals of menhaden fish, black as ink, write their fates in the waves. Marsh birds applaud from the reeds. Moon snails, on foot that is stomach, creep through an abysmal bottom we will never see but will each become.

Tempo Segundo  = 60–63 (all pauses vary within 1–3")

alla misura

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(do not play on the repeat)

I Vn. II

Va.

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                       

24

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 

      

        



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         

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      

       

(cont.)

Nar.

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        

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        

        

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      

       

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cue Quartet after “become”

       

       

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* Repeat m. 19-28 until Vn. I player cues the Quartet to smoothly jump to m. 29 from wherever you are after “become”.

4

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senza misura

Tempo Primo  = 44–48

alla misura

always libera, inexact number of repetitions

      pizz.

I Vn.

II

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32 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

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   

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 

  

                 

 

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arco

  

   

  

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 

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        

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

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

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Who would believe, conceive in their wildest dreaming that I,...

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senza misura

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                 

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                   dolce, rubato         

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molto portamento

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Tempo Primo

Tempo Segundo

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ISSUU Version  for  Perusal     Only         4–7"

29

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 

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Proceed to m. 37 quickly after “dreaming that I...”

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5

37 Nar.

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...a Pennsylvania girl born of hill and valley farm, would find the seashore to be more home than barn, warm house, or any four walls at all? Who would believe that I, a girl who traded milking time for tide's never-ending ebb and flow, would become a biologist?

ISSUU Version     Only for  Perusal      

Tempo Segundo  = 60–63 (all pauses vary within 1–3")

alla misura

I Vn.

II

Va.

Vc.

   

             42

   

(do not play on the repeat)

   

   

  

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

 

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  

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 

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    

  

  

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    

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  

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  

  

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(cont.)

Nar.

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II

Va.

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     

  

   

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  

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   

    

   

      

  

    

cue Quartet after “biologist”

 



*   

* Repeat m. 37-46 until Vn. II player cues the Quartet to smoothly jump to m. 47 from wherever you are after “biologist”.

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ISSUU Version for Perusal Only  4–7"

47 Nar.

I Vn.

II

Va.

Vc.

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senza misura

pizz.

            

   

   

  

   

   

  

  

   

  

A biologist of oceans and a challenger of 48 what would poison it?

Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 

 





  

    

   

cue Nar.







  

   

4–5"

Nar.

I

   

    

    

   

   

   

   

  



   

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

7



ISSUU Version  Perusal    Only   for             4–5"

50 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 



       51

Nar.



    

   

 



  

                  gentle   



  



  



 

arco

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

           espressivo  





  

  



   

    









       



              

       



 

     



 



Tempo Tercero  = 44–52 poco stringendo

alla misura





poco





    



   

8



55 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



poco rit.

         

61





ISSUU Version Only  for Perusal      









a tempo







                 





arpegg.

arco

 

 





  

 

  



arco

   

arco

   



   





 cue Nar.





 









There were those who would not see my dreams worthy, nor hear my voice worthy of hearing; women were supposed to be silent. But my words flowed on river to sea. Paragraphs became protest, the waves pounding on rocks, wearing them down to sand.

Nar.



senza misura

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

   

    

     

 





tacet around “hearing”





tacet around “river to sea”





tacet around “down to sand”





tacet around “down to sand”

9 Imagine this: The privilege of giving voice to the robin whose songs fade with the crop dusters vulturing shadow, of giving voice to the lone tanager in the sycamore tree who cannot find a partner, 62 of giving voice to the pelicans on their way to better fishing grounds only to find barren waters.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

Nar.





Vn. II

Va.

Vc.







 









 





Tempo Primo  = 44–48

alla misura

I







63



ISSUU Version for Perusal Only 

Nar.

 



 

                 dolce, rubato     molto portamento





 

     





      





rit.











            



Nar.   cue 

        

10

69

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only 

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 

Nar.



senza misura



 

Vn. II

Tempo Segundo  = 60–63 (all pauses vary within 1–3")

  

    

    



       



pizz.

            pizz.

Vc.

Proceed to m. 70 quickly after “hiding my being...”



...But the truth was too loud, too true, and so, I claimed my full name: “Rachel Louise Carson.”

For Mother Atlantic insisted I put pen to paper. She insisted I magnify Her voice above the growing storm of crimes against all the wild that remains.

This perhaps a deed too far for those in power who would poison the earth and claim progress.

(do not play on the repeat)

Va.

 



alla misura

I





    

70



Once, I signed my name only with the two letters R and L, hiding my being...











   



      

         

 

          pizz.



  





        







      









     

11

77 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

ISSUU Version Only  for Perusal    









         





            









    

         











senza misura

       pizz.

II

Va.

Vc.

 





               



cue Quartet after “claim progress”





 





*

      

  

4–7"

Nar.

Vn.

    



84

I



(cont.)

   

   

  

   

  

   

  



   

  

   

  

    



* Repeat m. 70-83 until Vn. I player cues the Quartet to smoothly jump to m. 84 after “claim progress”.

   

cue Nar.

12

85

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only 

Too far for those that stuffed their pockets with death, making it so that I could not rest.

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



















4–7"

86 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



 

      

   

   

  

   

  

   



  

   

  

   

  

    

   

cue Nar.

87

13 Congress questioned my courage, and chemical empires spat lies, but I had only a typewriter and the truth science told me. Blacklisted by greed-starved men, I would be myself without apology.

“Rachel Louise Carson. Rachel. Louise. Carson.”

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only 

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



















4–5"

88 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 



    

    

   

   

   

   

  



   

  

  

   

  

  

  

   

  

14



ISSUU Version for   Perusal       Only           4–5"

89 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 



       

Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

   



   



   

   



    

 



                    gentle 











          espressivo



 



     

  



Tempo Tercero  = 44–52 poco stringendo

 







alla misura

I

   



    

arco



90 Nar.

    

     

 



poco







                    



                   

15



94 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



poco rit.



  

99







ISSUU Version for Perusal    Only   a tempo



        

      



arco

  



 

  



 

 



arco



arco

   

  

 

    



 

 cue Nar.











 

And so, years passed: I lived my life by tide high and low, the stillness of slack in between those edges of extreme. Looking into the tide pool, alongside starfish, dogwinkles and sea urchins, I saw myself reflected, yes, but more and more, I saw myself the same.

Nar.



senza misura

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

   

    

     

  





tacet around “stillness of slack”





tacet around “starfish”





tacet around “more and more”





tacet around “more and more”

16

100 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 

The same as every life breathing through gills or skin. Whether swimming or creeping, we are saltwater kin.

Years passed: Who was I? A woman always on deadline writing on life’s wild lessons for us, and for wild beings, too.

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only    







(gradually more and more heightened in tone)

Would we survive our own arrogant march, its war against ourselves spilled over to the Earth?

But by what means? As nature intended? Or by human negligence ignored until the birds would sing no more?

101 Until the sea around us would be empty. Until the tide pools became lifeless puddles.

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



 

 

  cresc.

enter at “empty”



   cresc.

 

enter at “war”



 

 

cresc.

enter at “as nature intended”

cresc.

  

enter at “sing no more”





Proceed to m. 102

 

17

102 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



alla misura Intense  = 72

   

II

Va.

Vc.



                                     

            



Nar.

Vn.





ISSUU Version  for  Only     Perusal         

106

I





   

      



 

 

   

  

           





    

                                                      

         



    



  







 



      



                

  



       

  









          

     

       cue Nar.

                      

18

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

Narrator (elevated):

I worked by Time and tide, Time and tide!

I worked by Time and tide, Time and tide!

Word by word, line by line!

Word by word, line by line!

I worked until not even Spring herself could be silenced.

I worked, I worked!

To denunciate the poisons, the poisons seen as magic potions, magic potions rather than the creator of the killing fields, of death magnified, of the harm of a cancer, a cancer metastasized.

The same blight that would take my life.

I warned of this!

I warned of this.

And… it found me first.

It found me first.

109 Nar.

Still intense, balance against narrator ( = 72)

                                 

 *

I Vn.

II

Va.

Vc.

 



   











 

           





                        

                

          

         

      

* Narrator will likely conclude text (“...And... it found me first. It found me first.”) before m. 143.

If needed, repeat marks are offered m. 144-145.

    

19

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.





ISSUU Version for Perusal Only                      

113

(cont.)





     

      



  

 

  

        

     

  





    

        



     



                            

          



116 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

       

   







   



  











                

    

                                       



  

         

            



20

ISSUU Version  for Only     Perusal                

119 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

(cont.)

 

 

  

       



   

           







            

                    

        

     



    



        

       

123 Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

 



calando



calando

   

calando

Vc.

calando

             

             

                   

   

           

  

     

   

 

  





  





    

 

21

 

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only           

 

   

128

(cont.)

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



 

133 Nar.





Vn.

II

Va.

Vc.

 

   





     

   





   



     

   

   



     



 



    

Meno mosso

I



    

             

   





      



 

 



      

      

 fragile

                 

 

    





    





    







 

    



  

   

22

139

(cont.)

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 





   







ISSUU Version for Perusal        Only   repeat if needed

*





  



  



 



 

   

 





     



 





 





cue Nar.

 

“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place,” and the tidal pools hold lessons if we will learn.

Imagine peering into the pools, the light in diamond shards from a sun millions of miles distant causing us to squint. Cold in an offshore wind, we warm together: starfish, and tiny unnamed fish, and moon 147 snails grazing emerald green algae, and hermit crabs carrying mobile homes on backs.

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 

 

senza misura









tacet around “Cold in an offshore wind”

 

* Repeat m. 144-145 if needed for Narrator to finish text: “...And... it found me first. It found me first.”

       

23

148 Nar.







Tempo Segundo  = 60–63

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

 



 

         pizz.

            155

pizz.







ISSUU Version Only  for Perusal         

alla misura

 





  

Tempo Primo  = 44–48



cue Nar.

        pizz.                        



       

         plaintive    

 

Our lives teeter between heaven and earth, whether feathered, furred, or finned.

We are saltwater kin...

Nar.



 

senza misura

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

   

 





 



  Proceed to m. 156 quickly after “saltwater kin...”

 

24

 



ISSUU Version for Perusal Only             

156 Nar.

I lived believing love to be the currency of empathy: “It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility.”

Tempo Segundo  = 60–63 (all pauses vary within 1–3")

alla misura





(do not play on the repeat)

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



       

           161

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.



      

 (cont.)

 



                 









         



cue Quartet after “wonder and humanity”





        



   





 

        











 





       

*                 







Tempo Primo  = 44–48





 

        



Lift your gaze...

senza misura



cue Nar.







  

Proceed to m. 167 quickly after “gaze...” * Repeat m. 156-162 until Vn. I player cues the Quartet to smoothly jump to m. 163 after “wonder and humanity”.

             

25

167 Nar.

 

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only   

Tempo Segundo  = 60–63 (all pauses vary within 1–3")

alla misura

                             

(do not play on the repeat)

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.

  





174 Nar.

              rit.

Vn.

II

Va.

Vc.



















 



       

   







Tempo Primo  = 44–48

I



...and let your sight wander from barnacles and welks and see the blue sky where terns send sharp cries to cut the murmur of tide's ebb and flow.





 



   





  

  





        







      

      



      

   

   



  



 



4–7"



senza misura



    

*

   

                                                 

* Repeat m. 167-173 until Vn. I player cues the Quartet to smoothly jump to m. 174 after “ebb and flow”.

 

26

Vn.

II

Va.

Vc.

 

Nar.

I Vn. II

Va.

Vc.







    

                       180



   



ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

Nar.

I



8–10"

179

 

   

   

   

   

   

   

    

   

That is our world. Same air, same water, same soil, same earth, same faith.

alla misura  = 40



   

   

   

    

   

   

   

    



   



             

cue Nar.





                   arco                                        arco                 arco                                 

   











 

   

Meno mosso

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only

ISSUU Version for Perusal Only