Black Earth

Black Earth first suggested itself to me from a purely technical standpoint: there are twelve scale degrees and two basic kinds of triads, major and minor, which makes forty-six possible two-part permutations of major and minor triads, so I set myself the task of composing a piece which exhausted these possibilities as its principle organizing structural device. Because each section therefore consists entirely of an oscillation between two chords, in addition I determined that the rhythm of each chord should also follow a permutational series, each measure being of a given length, from two to eleven eighth notes. This structure being set, it seemed obvious that if I were composing a vocal piece I should set some kind of fragments, so I looked to the past. Fragments of ancient poetry have always held a certain fascination; from the Lyra Graeca to Guy Davenport’s lapidary translations, these evocative shards not only hold the tantalizing promise of great works lost to time but stand as extraordinarily beautiful miniatures on their own. The great poet, thinker, and translator Anne Carson made a gorgeous version of Sappho’s poetry, If Not, Winter, which was published in a beautiful edition with two colors and a page layout that dramatized the broken remains she worked from. Of these scraps I selected fifty-five to set for soprano with brass ensemble, a combination evoking everything from Balkan brass bands to American hymns to Renaissance polyphony.