Light Perpetual
Parts: SATB (div.) + Chamber Ensemble (cl, bn, tpt, perc, vln, db
)
Pages: Conductor’s Score 36 Pgs with Cover (SATB + Chamber Ensemble) — 18 Pgs with Cover (SATB + piano)
Description: 6:25 – This piece was written in 2018 as the FINAL MOVEMENT of Vonnegut: Requiem, a multi-composer, multi-movement commissioning project produced by Voces Novae. ‘Light Perpetual’ can stand alone as a setting of Kurt Vonnegut’s emotional text for SATB choir + chamber ensemble.
It expresses the deep anxiety of living in the nuclear age-or any age in which we sense that humans could truly destroy themselves. Kurt Vonnegut referenced the institutional light of prisons, mental health institutions, and of course, the earth-destroying light of human-made nuclear explosion in writing about this ‘Requiem’. The ‘voices’ of this last part of the ‘Requiem’ begin with utter vulnerability within a shimmering but indifferent cosmos (created by the instruments). These voices grow increasingly frightened as they realize their own ability to destroy themselves and their world-they viscerally describe the ‘wrath’ and suffering they see coming. This moment of ‘death’ is imagined into being.Silence. Then, I took the word ‘pray’ to resemble any action that works against calamity and suffering. It becomes a uniting rhythm that allows these voices to re-envision true rest or peace-’sleep’. Ultimately, these final words felt like a call to the powers-that-be–human or divine–to give us all softness, rest, sleep in the face of our own destruction.
COMMISSIONER: Voces Novae, Bloomington, Indiana . Supported by: Indiana University Arts & Humanities Council, Charles and Linda Pickle in honor of the Schelbitzki family, and Paul and Susan Sullivan. In memory of: Marian and John Gaskill, John Lawson, Sandy Wood Taylor, and Evans Woollen III.
Full Vonnegut: Requiem available here https://www.jwpepper.com/myscore/vonnegutrequiem