Orchestration

for four low voices and electronics

Text

All texts and translations are drawn from the public domain with the exceptions
of those by Juliet Neil and Austin Diaz; those rights are secured.

Duration

25 minutes

Commissioned by/Premiere

Premiered January 25th, 2025 at The Church at Sag Harbor.

This commission, written for Roomful of Teeth, has been made possible by the
Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Program, with generous funding provided by The Mellon Foundation. It is dedicated to Roomful of Teeth.

Score

This score is in exclusivity until January 2026.

Notes

My father immigrated from Italy to America in the 1950s. Southern Italy, in particular, was devastated by the war, and I grew up with the many stories of my dad’s childhood there and my family’s enormous pride in their journey to America.

My family has returned often to Italy to visit relatives, and I’ve had the pleasure of living there for extended periods as a fellow at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Bogliasco Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome.

As a composer of opera and vocal music, it’s impossible (or, at least, inadvisable) to avoid the influence of Italian music, but it wasn’t until I received a commission from Roomful of Teeth that I decided to explore the traditional music of southern Italy. Roomful of Teeth are specialists in exploring the vocal traditions of different cultures. 

Though most of my family is from the Campania region, the traditional music of nearby Sicily has long been an interest of mine, ever since I heard the Lamenti Di Venerdi Santo (The Lament of the Friday Saint) on a field recording made by Alan Lomax, lamenting music sung around Good Friday. Much like everything else Sicilian, its combination of influences from East to West intrigued me. I was eager to use this tradition as an inspiration for my composition. Further, I was asked by Roomful of Teeth to write a composition for all male singers in the group, and I wanted to explore this mostly male vocal tradition.

With the help of fellow Italian-American composer and colleague, Christopher Trapani, I visited the small town of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto. I was able to record three traditional songs that locals sing: two in Sicilian (a language quite distinct from Italian)—Lû vennardì di marzu (“The Friday of March”) and Ah, si! Versate Lacrime (“Spill your Tears”)—and one in Latin—Vexilla Regis (“The King’s Standards”). These songs are often sung by townsfolk while marching to the center of town. On the recordings, you can hear the singers walking. These recordings formed the core of my piece.

While exploring this music, I experienced a feeling that many children of immigrants feel: a profound sense of recognition, and also a distance—I knew that while this music is part of my heritage, it’s not my music. So rather than asking the singers of Roomful of Teeth to sing this music, I asked two translators of Sicilian and Latin (Juliet Neil and Austin Diaz, respectively) to translate this text into English. Over fragments of the original recordings (which are heard), I wrote new music out of fragments of the text of the original songs, often with electronic processing on the voice. This creates a tension between the long history of this music as it rubs against modernity. Much of my identity is born out of this history, informed by my suburban American upbringing listening to electronic and popular music. I wanted all aspects of my life to come into the music.

Between each of these songs, I intersperse spoken interludes from the great poet of the Italian language, Dante Alighieri. In his Commedia, Dante observes all humanity, cursed and divine. I used these recitations to remind the audience that I am an observer of this history. The sounds of footsteps that accompany these recordings are me walking over various surfaces—sand, gravel, concrete, snow—which represent my journey of finding this beautiful music. This piece, in its entirety, is my homage.