Fish

Program Notes

The New York Treble Singers, a 12-voice professional ensemble, was one of the nation’s foremost women’s choruses. The group premiered the treble version of my Melville setting, Shiloh, in early 2006, and shortly thereafter their gifted founder and Music Director, Virginia Davidson asked me to write an extended work for them. Fish was the result. 

The work was originally written as a five-movement cycle. For various reasons, including shortened rehearsal time and some compositional “over-writing,” only the three movements with alto saxophone were presented at the premiere. The two movements with baritone saxophone have yet to be performed. I haven’t ruled out the possibility of editing those two movements and making the set available in five movements at some point in the future. (The larger set runs about 21 minutes.) 

The larger work was conceived in an arch form (ABCDA), and that is maintained in the shorter cycle (ABA). The two outer movements each combine a slower declamatory section with a brisker contrapuntal one in 12/8 time. The Prelude opens with a steeply rising 5-note figure in the saxophone. The rest of the movement is a cappella. The excerpt from Psalm 104 is a prayer of thanks to God for the “teeming” life of the sea. In the closing Heaven, text by Rupert Brooke, fish ponder if there’s “anything Beyond” their everyday pond. It begins with a section of rhythmicized speech overlaid with breathy, click-y, bubbly action on the sax. This is followed by what might be best described as a “fish food fugue.” Eric Ormsby’s Star-Fish is a dark and frankly erotic text that I’ve tried to capture with pulsating and quietly dangerous energy. The saxophone must tackle multiphonics alongside slow, sultry melodic lines, while the choral parts feature dense and softly dissonant chords. 

Fish
Psalm 104 (Vv. 24-25), Eric Ormsby, Rupert Brooke

1. Prelude

0 Lord! How marvelous are your works! In wisdom you have wrought them all; the earth is full of your creatures.

Look at the sea, great and wide! It teems with countless beings, living things both great and small.

2. Star-Fish

The stellar sea crawler, maw
Concealed beneath, with offerings of
Prismed crimson now darkened, now like
The smile of slag, a thing made rosy
As poured ingots, or suddenly dimmed --

I appreciate the studious labour
Of your rednesses, the scholarly fragrance
Of your sex. To mirror tidal drifts|
The light ripples across or to enhance darkness
With palpable tinctures, dense as salt.

You crumple like a puppet's fist
Or erect, bristling, your tender luring barbs.
Casual abandon, like a dropped fawn glove.
Tensile symmetries, like a hawk's claw.

You clutch the seafloor.
You taste what has fallen.