When My Daughter Asked Why There Are Stars, I Said
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PDF score and parts for When My Daughter Asked Why There Are Stars, I Said, music by Lisa Neher and poetry by Philip Metres
for saxophone orchestra or clarinet choir and voice (mezzo-soprano or any other singer comfortable in this range: C4-F5)
Length: 8 minutes
Range: C4-F5
RecordingPerforming ForcesVoice (Mezzo-Soprano or any other singer comfortable in this range), Range: C4-F5,
2 Soprano Saxophones 4 Alto Saxophones 2 Tenor Saxophones 2 Baritone Saxophones 1 Bass Saxophone |
ScoreTransposing Score
C Score
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Program Note
Does anything last of ourselves beyond our rather short lifetimes? What connects us to the world and the cosmos around us? Are loved ones that have died still with us? When I first read Philip Metres’s poem When my daughter asked why there are stars, I said, it was as if he had looked into my heart and given voice to questions, longings, and fears that have been swirling inside me for many months. The poem expresses awe at the vastness of our universe, yearning to understand our place within it, loneliness of losing ones we love, and the hope of a moment of conviction. Metres uses line breaks and spaces to distribute words and phrases out across the page with gaps around them, like stars shining in the night sky. This translates musically into wide spaced chords and pointillistic attacks in the saxophones, while the singer’s phrases float, vulnerable, searching. Later, texture and momentum build, expressing optimism and possibility. At the climax of the piece, a soaring soprano saxophone solo bursts forth, representing an almost divine moment of connection. If there is a meaning to our lives, if something of ourselves can continue on after we are gone, I think it might be in the way Metres describes: in the light of a distant star reaching us ten thousand years after it has been extinguished, in a turn of phrase passed on from a loved one that becomes so fused with our own way of thinking that we can no longer tell where it ends and we begin.
This piece was commissioned by the Resonance Saxophone Orchestra for performance at the 41st U.S. Navy International Saxophone Symposium and was premiered on January 12, 2019. It is dedicated to my Grandma Pat Harvey: stargazer, mystic, seeker of truth, fountain of love, who was so excited about the piece from its first whisperings all the way to the double bar line. For the last year, every visit has included the question, “Now what about those saxophones?” Well, here they are. I love you.
This piece was commissioned by the Resonance Saxophone Orchestra for performance at the 41st U.S. Navy International Saxophone Symposium and was premiered on January 12, 2019. It is dedicated to my Grandma Pat Harvey: stargazer, mystic, seeker of truth, fountain of love, who was so excited about the piece from its first whisperings all the way to the double bar line. For the last year, every visit has included the question, “Now what about those saxophones?” Well, here they are. I love you.