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Year composed: 2023

Duration: 12 minutes

Awarded the 2023 Brehm Prize in Choral Composition

Score video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLWuwc4h3PE

"Three Songs of Shattering" is a setting of an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem by the same name. The poem is in three parts, and it is set respectively in three short movements. Each movement deals with the idea of grief experienced in a different way. The first movement explores a nihilistic sadness where the grief is so overwhelming that all other meaning fades away. This movement uses breath sounds and silence to bring a sense of weight. The second movement evokes a nostalgic sadness for something that has been lost to the past. To convey this feeling I wrote a simple folk-song inspired tune to embody the idealized perception of memory. The third movement is the most emotionally complex, and explores feelings of regret and self-blame. I use the layered juxtaposition of major and minor triads to depict the layered feelings of self-involved sadness as well as the emotional complexity of healing from grief. The text uses natural imagery of changing seasons and the bloom and decay of flowers to symbolize this grief and how it affects us over time.