Year composed: SATB (2006)
Duration: 7′
Instrumentation: SATB choir
Commissioned by the Volti Ensemble
Notes:
My homage to John Campion’s astounding text “Only one great thing sings me when I am mindful” is replete with multiple associations spanning the “high” and the “low” in art: I attempted to play on the intersections between such disparate practices as Tibetan Buddhist meditation, barbershop/glee-club close-knit harmonies, scat-singing, rap, and Gregorian chant. In the first and last sections there is a prominent reference to the great Buddhist/Hinduist mantra “Om mani padme hum,” which with six syllables is half of the twelve in the Campion, and contains a similar symmetry of single versus double syllable words.