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Apocalyptic Visions (2018)

For tenor and piano | 22'


WINNER, Bernard Rogers Memorial Prize, Eastman School of Music



Apocalyptic Visions grew out of several songs I composed in early 2018 after a prolonged period of little composition. They are deeply personal and feature me as both composer and poet (and, at their premiere, performer).

On the surface, there are many references to "apocalypse," both in a religious sense and a secular one. The poems mainly describe depletion of resources (the "parched ground" of Poem 3 and the rising oceans of Poem 6) and the collapse of natural processes and the environment ("darkness covers the land/the ground freezes/birds fall from the sky/and everywhere people are covered in ice").

Far from being an impartial observer, the speaker is a participant in this depletion and destruction, as described most clearly in Poem 3 ("your lips pour out water/but I, the parched ground, drink it up so completely that nothing remains") and Poem 1 ("The sky burns red/with the unquenchable fire of a thousand suns/just like the blood in us all"). Over the course of the work, the speaker wrestles with this involvement—unquenchable hunger and desire—that causes such destruction.

Poem 5 also presents another kind of apocalypse—a mental apocalypse: the need to grow stronger from painful experiences and the simultaneous loss of innocence this entails. This loss of innocence connects directly to a theme explored in the work: the question of humanity as ultimately good or evil. Poem 1 holds all humanity as culpable ("just like the blood in us all"), and Poem 6 takes this even further, to a somewhat absurd level, accusing nature itself of being complicit in evil. In the end, the speaker reaches a moment of acceptance. The "sun" referenced at the very end of Poem 6 is the same "unquenchable" sun from the beginning of Poem 1, but it is now seen as something to be yearned for and adored and not an object of oppression and hatred. This sun, and "chas[ing]" after it, could mean many different things.

The text is fully original and was written in tandem with the music. Poem 2 is subtitled "After Johann Christoph Gottsched," and is a paraphrase of Gottsched's text set by J.S. Bach in his Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl, a secular cantata known as the Trauerode (BWV 198). The Trauerode was written as a funeral ode paying homage to Christiane Eberhardine, wife of August II the Strong, the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. The imagery gives a sense of apocalyptic encounter and fits well with the frantic and mystical atmosphere that opens my work.


Text:


1

The sky burns red
with the unquenchable fire of a thousand suns
just like the blood in us all


2    (After Johann Christoph Gottsched)

The trembling sound of the bell awakens us with fear and loathing
piercing flesh and bone
the eternal sapphire house
draws, o princess, your gaze
the blinding light of one thousand suns turns our day to midnight
and surrounds your transfigured head


3

In this desert you are an oasis
your skin is purer than the dunes of sand
your mouth is a fountain
your lips pour out water
but I, the parched ground, drink it up so completely that nothing remains.


4

At noon the sun lags
darkness covers the land
the ground freezes
birds fall from the sky
and everywhere people are covered in ice
the silence is unlike anything


5

Now some doors are closed that will never open again
I used to hear them swing open behind me
but now they're all boarded shut
will I ever see inside again?


6

The trees, tall, noble and green
have been accomplices in our crimes
only by feigning lifelessness have they escaped the punishment of the law.

through the years and the steady passing of time they have witnessed unspeakable things
they watched it all
but they just stood there.

when the oceans rise, and the last rain falls
still it won't be enough to wash the blood from their branches
and still, still, the rivers of red blood will reach the seas and fill them completely.

Am I saying this out of envy?
I want nothing more than what a tree wants. To wrap myself in the forest, hidden
and to chase the sun.



First performance: January 27, 2019: Nicolas Chuaqui, tenor; Alice Chuaqui Baldwin, piano. "DMA Recital 2." Hatch Hall, Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY.


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