The Revival
ensemble: horn quintet (horn, violin, 2 violas, ‘cello)
duration: 12 minutes
written: summer 2019
written for: Tyler Taylor
premiered: October 29th, 2019; Bloomington, IN
PROGRAM Note:
For the last few years I have been immersed in the music of Tyler Taylor, (the works dedicatee and performer). Tyler’s music has a tendency to treat individual instruments like people, with their own unique quirks and personalities. These instruments, in Tyler’s musical world, are also subjected to some of the darker elements of the human experience; they are manipulated, restricted, and rejected. I thought a great deal about his music when writing a work for Tyler and wanted to, in a way, pay homage to his composer side while on the surface level highlighting his performer side.
The Revival is at its core about manipulation. In the summer of 2019, I started reading a book by the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Frances Fitzgerald called The Evangelicals. I have for a long time had an interest in the history of the evangelicals and more specifically in their more fringe sects. After reading the book and watching major figures of the movement such as Billy Graham and Oral Roberts sell out massive services (or revivals) at Yankee Stadium or Madison Square Garden, I made a connection between Tyler Taylor’s music and the act of manipulation on the part of these evangelical leaders. As such, the horn, in my work, asks almost as a spiritual leader.
The piece begins with a call to action (The Message), in which the horn sounds out a four note gospel that will remain its core musical material throughout the work. The second section (Thus Saith The Lord), has the horn, desperately trying to relay its message to a seemingly unwilling and reserved string quartet.
After a fire and brimstone cadenza (The Sermon), the string ensemble beings to take up bits and pieces of the horn’s spirited call and Speak In Tounges, a danse macabre in which the players ecstatically perform in a series of unorthodox ways.
Finally, in the concluding section (The Revival), the string quartet, now seemingly brain washed, repeats almost everything the horn gives them, expressionless and hypnotized.
