AUTUMN RIVULETS for soprano and orchestra
(2019, rev. 2020)
instrumentation:
3(3+picc), 3(3=EH), 3(3=bcl), 3(3=cbsn) - 4331 - Timp, Perc(3), Hp, Pno - Strings - Soprano soloist
duration: 28 minutes
premieres:
Quad City Symphony Orchestra, October 5-6, 2019, Adler Theatre, Davenport, IA
Mark Russell Smith, conductor; Carrie Henneman Shaw, soprano
Indiana University Symphony Orchestra, October 13, 2021
Thomas Wilkins, conductor; Solène Le Van, soprano
Audio samples:
1. Introduction into start of Whitman (1-75)
2. Transition and Thomas stanza 1 (151-181)
3. Transition and start of Thomas stanza 3 ("Good men", 313-376)
4. Whitman stanzas 4 and start of 5 (440-473)
5. Orchestral Interlude (532-602)
6. Thomas stanza 6 (637-665)
7. Whitman stanza 7 beginning (680-694)
8. Whitman stanza 7 ending (817-858)
Commissioned in part by the Quad City Symphony Orchestra Association in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Walt Whitman (2019).
Commissioned in part by the Trustees of Indiana University and the Jacobs School of Music,
in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the founding of Indiana University (2020)
and the 100th anniversary of the founding of the IU School of Music (2021).
Program Note:
Jointly commissioned by the Quad City Symphony Orchestra and its music director Mark Russell Smith and the Indiana University School of Music and Dean Gwyn Richards through the “Decade of Commissions” initiative, Autumn Rivulets, for soprano and orchestra, was composed in celebration of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday in 2019 and of the bicentennial of the founding of Indiana University in 2020.
Autumn Rivulets sets three streams (or rivulets) of text, autumnal in tone, reflecting on life, death and truth: Walt Whitman’s“As Consequent, etc.” from Leaves of Grass (Book XXIV: Autumn Rivulets); Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”; and some brief quotations about “truth” by John Keats, Mark Twain, St. Augustine, Batman, Rudy Giuliani, and Thomas Gieryn, a retired sociology professor and vice-provost at Indiana University.
The composition has an arching wave-like formal design. Whitman begins and ends the work, but along the way alternates stanzas with Thomas and the “truth” quotes. The Whitman sections often suggest the water imagery of the text, with drifting currents and waves reflected in the gestures, harmony and rhythms; while mostly a calm traversal of America, the “currents” build toward “the storm’s abysmic waves, …Raging over the vast,…” before ending with gently lapping waves gradually disappearing..."Wash'd on America's shores." The “truth” quotes are presented as two moments of repose in the piece and are meant to bridge the Whitman and Thomas texts a bit.
While the Whitman is grand and universal in tone and perspective, the Thomas is utterly personal and wrenching. I am sure everyone has personal thoughts and feelings about the famous poem Dylan Thomas wrote for his dying father. My mother died in January 2019 at home in Portland; that day I was composing the Whitman section for “Some half-hid in Oregon.” My father is in good health, but is in his 80s; I certainly hope he will “rage against the dying of the light” for years to come, as must we all
Autumn Rivulets is dedicated to my parents, Dale and Edith Dzubay.
David Dzubay, June 24, 2019
Video of 10/13/21 performance (starting at 13:40):
Perusal Score:
