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| 2016/03/20 22:41:32瀏覽162｜回應0｜推薦6 | |
Sowash: "Northern Lights" from North Country Suite for orchestra.
 .... Suddenly I noticed a strange, dark smudge, just above the horizon, far, far ahead. Like the grain elevators, it seemed to rise, slowly, as I drew nearer and to spread, slowly, to the south and north of my ‘Westward, ho!' highway. Inexplicably, it rippled in gentle waves, rising and falling like a long, limpid, unimaginably huge, silken scarf, undulating unnaturally in a weirdly lugubrious wind. I could form no theory to explain it. Was it some bizarre phenomenon of the weather? A meteorological secret, known only to south-central Kansas? Could clouds execute such a vast, slow-motion dance-step? Was I watching the birth-throes of a tornado? No. It was birds. Millions upon millions of birds, migrating. The largest throng of birds I have ever seen or will ever see, winding across the sky in silent majesty. Silent from a distance, that is. At length, when I was underneath them, their cries were raucous, nearly maddening. The extraordinary sound, which I will never hear again, faded as I passed through and beyond the shifting shadows casty by a quarter billion birds. Silent once more, the undulation came into sight in my rear view mirror, falling further and further behind until becoming, again, only a strange, dark smudge ... receding, fading, shriveling, diminishing at last to the merest wisp on the horizon. Perhaps an hour after I had first sighted it, the spectacle fell from sight. It was astonishing. An immense wonder, unfolding with neither prompt nor direction from human beings, simply happening, once again, as it has for thousands and thousands of years, out there in the middle of the continent, a gigantic, living, non-human event taking place, all on its own, high up in the sky above the prairie. The only thing I ever saw that could compare with it was the Northern Lights. Like that migrating column of birds, it is something I’ve seen only once. When I was about seven years old, my parents awakened me one midnight and carried their little, sleepy boy, wrapped in a blanket, outside, to see the Northern Lights. Like the migration, it was another immense, unfolding wonder, happening entirely on its own, utterly indifferent to us, the little Sowash family, and thus, awe-inspiring. Faces upturned, mouths open, hushed, we cast our eyes skyward, feeling tenderly toward one another, vulnerable and small. At such moments, the distinctions that seem so important in common hours -- the nuanced distinctions we make between Liberal and Conservative, say -- surrender all significance. In 2011, the Heartland Symphony Orchestra, a spirited community orchestra serving Brainerd and Little Falls, Minnesota — two more good, old, American-sounding place-names — commissioned me to write an orchestral suite in honor of the orchestra's 35th anniversary. I wrote a five-movement piece called North Country Suite which they premiered in April of 2012. The second movement, entitled “Northern Lights,” strives to express the bewildered reverence we feel at those rare moments when we confront the essential truth that only Nature can teach us: that our brief, tiny lives are acted out upon an unutterably tremendous, unthinkably ancient, imponderably mysterious and almost inconceivably beautiful stage that is not of our making. To hear Josh Aerie conducting the Heartland Symphony Orchestra's premiere performance of "Northern Lights" from North Country Suite, click here: http://www.sowash.com/ To see a PDF of the score, click here: http://www.sowash.com/ Except for the audience at the premiere performance, you are the first to hear this music. I’d love to know what you think of it; reply if you're inclined. But please don't feel that you are expected to reply. I'm just glad you permit me to share my work in this way. As always, feel free to forward this message to friends who might enjoy it. Anyone can be on my little list of recipients for these mpFrees (as I call these musical emails). To sign up, people should email me at rick@sowash.com, sending just one word: "Yes." I'll know what it means. To unsubscribe, reply “unsubscribe.” Rick Sowash Cincinnati, OH March 20, 2016 www.sowash.com |
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