Orchestration

for flute, clarinet, violin, ‘cello, and electronics

Duration

20 minutes

Commissioned by/Premiere

Friday, November 21, 7pm
The Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, NJ

Sunday, November 23, 5pm
Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, Milwaukee, WI

The Crossing, choir
Present Music, ensemble
Donald Nally, conductor

Commissioned by Jan Serr and John Shannon for Present Music

Score

This score is in exclusivity until November 2026.

Notes

This work began as a fairly straight adaptation of the American poet George Oppen’s Of Being Numerous. I have long loved Oppen’s work—his insistence that we need each other, that the singular self is insufficient. Beyond the obvious analogy of a choir (numerous voices that speak as one), I was drawn to a text about the messy embrace of other people at a time when rampant isolation and individualism tears at society’s fabric.

My son, Matteo, was born in March of this year, and shortly after—when he was three months old—I began composing this work. I quickly set the seventh stanza from “Of Being Numerous”: Obsessed, bewildered / By the shipwreck / Of the singular / We have chosen the meaning / Of being numerous.

After writing this section, I began questioning what the work was really about. I was able to write because my wife Carrie and her mother were caring for our tiny baby. I was living exactly what Oppen describes—the impossibility of the singular self. So was this piece about society in the abstract, or about my own experience? I realized that showing my own transformation might be the most honest way to illustrate what happens when the focus shifts from the singular to the numerous.

I discussed these questions in the middle of the night with Carrie, an amazing writer and thinker in her own right, as we cared for Matteo (who did not like to sleep for more than a few hours at a time). She suggested the story of the piece was my own.

The work changed. It became about my own messy and joyful embrace of the multiplicity and complexity of the self and others. I used some of my favorite authors to tell this story: Oppen, Walt Whitman, William Faulkner, and even a fragment of T.S. Eliot. I set the time of the work at 3 a.m., a time I had never been so awake before. In the movements, I set their writings to music. Between movements, I wrote short interludes where processed electronic voices—created through synthesis and transformation of archival audio sources—perform monologues together with a solo voice, using fragments of their texts and electronic sounds adapted from my everyday life: breathing and sleeping sounds, bowls clanking.

The work’s journey now starts with Oppen, then turns to Whitman, whose famous line from “Song of Myself” resonated like it never had before: Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)The work includes a setting of a monologue from Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying about how the self dissipates in sleep (and boy, ours did). Finally, we return to Oppen, where I set the original text again, but this time the ambiguous harmonies that opened the setting are replaced with optimism, and the work finally embraces being numerous.Of Being Numerous was commissioned by Jan Serr and John Shannon for Present Music, who commissioned my first work for voice and ensemble, The Branch Will Not Break, ten years ago—a piece that was also performed by Donald Nally. This work is dedicated to Donald, The Crossing, and Present Music, and to Matteo, Carrie, and Grandma Qiao. I ask that they share this dedication with one another—because we don’t become ourselves alone.

Electronics

There is a solo narrated part that may be spoken by either one or three male singers. If narrated by three singers, whoever narrates the prologue should narrate the last section. The amplification should either happen ideally with lavalier microphones that are turned on and off during the prologue/interludes or stand mics. The narration should be visible and dramatic. The amplification should be turned on and off between interludes.

The prologue and interludes mix amplified solo voice, choir, ensemble, and electronic soundtrack. To coordinate these, the conductor should have a click track for these movements (as indicated in the score). The composer provides a simple application with 8 electronic cues in it (the 4 interludes and four short samples at the end) created in Max (free download). Either a sound engineer or a member of the ensemble or choir should trigger these sounds.