Joseph Sowa and Dr. Michael Hicks, Music Composition

When I was a child (out of the many dreams I had as a child), I wanted to be a scientist. The idea of discovering new things about the world sounded fascinating. However, as I read about scientists, I noticed a funny thing. Many major scientific discoveries happened by accident: x-rays, penicillin, the smallpox vaccine . . .

I was reminded of that fact most recently while completing my ORCA grant. My stated purpose was to write and perform a twenty-minute, multi-movement composition for mixed choir and organ using apocryphal texts. To do this, I planned, first, to study choral arranging and the significant choral works of the twentieth century, and second, to distill what I learn into my own composition. More generally, I wanted to read from the ancient non-canonical Judeo-Christian writings and see what artistic inspiration I could receive from them. While the first part of my grant work went according to plan, the second part pleasantly defied my expectations.

I conducted part of my research through classes already offered at BYU and the other part through independent study. During 2008, I took four classes that helped me create my final project: Choral Arranging, Sixteenth Century Counterpoint, Basic Choral Conducting, and Spring Chorale. All of these classes were exceptional, and only space limits a full discussion of how they contributed to my final project.

In my independent study, I researched both the apocryphal texts themselves as well as more about music. From January through June, I read the entirety of several volumes as well as selections from about a dozen others. On the whole, I was rather disappointed by the inhumanity of many of these texts. Many of them were brimming with mystical and magical elements at the expense of shedding spiritual light on the human condition. As I’ve begin to be describing it in conversation, many of these texts were “lost for a reason.” Still, I was able to gather together a small number of meaningful excerpts.

In the mean time, I also listened to a lot of choir music from the conventional to the groundbreaking. Although I listened to many influential pieces and discovered many I liked, I don’t feel like this part of my study contributed as much as the others to the completion of the project. In addition, I read a score or so of miscellaneous magazine and journal articles as well as Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise and John Adams’ Hallelujah Junction. These books gave me greater insight into both why music evolved the way it did in the twentieth century and where it is going headed into the twenty-first. Going into the composition phase of my project, I found this insight to be invaluable.

I began working on the composition side of the project in earnest at the beginning of May. From May through November I wrote a whole series of study pieces in addition to the final composition that slowly began to take shape. For the final composition I quickly narrowed in on two specific texts, one from 1 Enoch and the other from the Apocalypse of Abraham.

These two texts both dealt with the matter of revelation, but from opposite angles. In the 1 Enoch passage, Enoch recounts how he was carried away in a vision up to the thrown of God. By the time he arrives there, Enoch is frightened, but God reassures him, saying, “Come hither, Enoch, and hear my word.” In the passage from the Apocalypse of Abraham, Abraham lays down for his father the reasons why he can worship neither idols nor the elements of the earth. One by one Abraham describes their failings and then finishes by exclaiming, “What God then has made all these? Who is he? or what is he that tests me now in the confusion of my thoughts? If only that God would reveal himself to us!”

I thought it would be interesting to highlight the opposing nature of these texts by running them concurrently against each other in the same composition. I also came up with an interesting way of doing this: I would have the Enoch text be a spoken part that would be processed and presented with other electronics and I would have the Abraham text be sung by the choir. Sometimes these elements would alternate; other times they would occur simultaneously. I expected that the piece would take about twenty minutes to say its message. By so doing, I hoped to create an intriguing synthesis of the states in which these two men found themselves. I wanted to capture Enoch’s rapture and Abraham’s frustration and explore the space between these two feelings. I’ve seen in my life that both of these experiences are part of the nature of receiving revelation, although at times it doesn’t seem natural that they should both be “true.” The Enlightenment-informed part of me would protest that “either God is there or he is not.” However, I have come to see that this is a gross simplification of how revelation works, and I wanted to capture in music the internal tension that actually occurs.

As the months rolled on I felt progressively more stymied by the weight of my artistic vision. I couldn’t settle on a musical language in which to set the Abraham text. Conventional melody, I decided, wouldn’t suit the texts, but if I pushed to far the other way, I would have a difficult time getting the piece performed. I learned this sad reality in March when I wrote and had performed a short setting of some text from the Latin requiem. In performing that piece, I discovered that what I considered to be an “easier” tonal idiom would still require a lot of practice for the singers to pull off. Likewise, when I created a mock up of the electronic version of the Enoch text, I soon realized that it was far too short to support a twenty-minute span; the three minute mock up I created was bursting from the seams.

While I was thus in the “confusion” of my own thoughts, I had to interrupt work on the project to complete two other pieces: a work for chamber ensemble, “I AM,” and a piece for clarinet and piano, “Scarred Hands.” These pieces were both awful to write. I agonized over them even as I churned them out on short deadlines and with mixed feelings. I was pleased, though that they were both performed, the chamber ensemble piece at a well-attended Group for New Music concert and the clarinet piece in a reading session.

With these pieces completed, I went back to work on my apocryphal choral piece. However, my stupor continued. I pressed onward and tangentially wrote a nice setting of some text in 2 Baruch for voice and piano. Still, the great work I had planned simply wouldn’t come. This great frustration occurred around Thanksgiving, and musically I didn’t feel like I had a lot to be grateful for. I had almost burned myself out this semester writing music that my heart wasn’t in and with only a few weeks left I had seemingly nothing to show for a project I had been working on for almost a year. It was during this break that I read Adams’ Hallelujah Junction. In the first half of the book Adams describes his growing pains from the moment he decided he wanted to be a composer until a fateful drive in Northern California listening to Wagner that catalyzed his musical maturity and self-confidence. I’m not sure what part of the book set me off, but somewhere in reading it, I began to realize that the “choir piece” I had intended to write had already been born in the form of those other two pieces.

The more I thought about it, the more I saw that this is what happened. “I AM” begins with a trumpet blast that sets of a sinuous duet between oboe and celeste which eventually winds its way through the entire ensemble culminating in a ferocious brass fanfare. As the shock of the fanfare subsides, the music arrives at a very consoling and nurturing passage in the strings which culminates in a resounding tutti restatement of that consoling theme. The piece closes with a reassuring horn solo over tremolo strings. This progression neatly mirrors the spiritual journey which Enoch undertook, from being drawn by winds up into heaven, to becoming frightened by a heavenly glory which he can only compare to flames, and finally to being reassured by the “Great Glory” Himself. Likewise, “Scarred Hands” finds its parallel in the Abraham text: a tortured clarinet melody works its way through questioning, to reasoning, to loudly crying out its frustration, to hoping for relief, and finally to accepting the deferment of its dreams.

And so, like the texts I chose, I arrived at my own seeming contradiction. These two pieces were not in the form of the piece I had planned on writing all along. However, in their substance and expression they completely fulfilled the artistic goals I had developed from the texts. In conclusion, I am pleased to report that this grant not only fulfilled its purpose but also create much fertile ground for me to cultivate in years to come.