Muehleisen Music

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"Peace, Night, Sleep" was commissioned by the Wake Forest University Concert Choir and Brian Gorelick, Director of Choral Ensembles at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. The poem, by Carl Sandburg, reveals a more intimate, gentle side of Sandburgs poetry influenced more by Japanese haiku, with its images of nature, than by the urban "city of big shoulders" landscapes often described in Sandburg's more well-known poems. From its folksong-like opening to the layered dreamscape of its coda, Peace, Night, Sleep draws the listener deeper and deeper into its sound world: a peaceful nocturne and a haven of rest. A few days after finishing Peace, Night, Sleep, in March 2011, the horrific 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit Japan as we all watched helplessly while the tsunami overtook everything and everyone in its path. When I got to the point of writing the dedication for Peace, Night, Sleep, the only choice was to dedicate the work to the those victims, with the hope that their peaceful lives might be restored to them once more and that those who were grieving the loss of home and of loved ones might somehow find a sense of peace and begin healing from this tragedy. My hope is that the peaceful nature of Sandburg's poem and of my own musical setting might be a haven, a place of peace, and an antidote to the horror and pain inflicted by this and by all natural disasters.

Peace, Night, Sleep

SATB Octavo

Eat Your Vegetables – Set One is a collection of three brief pieces for choir and clarinet based on a humorous set of poems by Northwest educator &amp; poet Joanne Gunnerson.
Each of the three poems focuses on a different vegetable, and my settings each have their own distinct character and style. The third movement—“RAH!”—was commissioned by
Dr. Gary Weidenaar &amp; the Central Washington University Chamber Choir. Celebrating “the lowly rutabaga,” I really had to “dig deep” (sorry) to muster up some positive
feelings (let alone a cheer!) about rutabagas, the syllabically superior cousins to turnips and parsnips. Despite my own indifference, let alone disdain, for that class of root
vegetables in general (I do love beets, however!), I managed to create a preposterous paean to the timid taproot. I also set three additional “veggie” poems by Gunnerson for
choir, trumpet, and percussion in a set that I creatively titled Eat Your Vegetables! – Set Two. To say anything else would spoil the surprises….Oops! I’ve already said too much!
Except to say, “Enjoy!

RAH! from Eat Your Vegetables! - Set One

SATB Full Score

Muehleisen's setting of Edward Lears frenetic limerick, There was an Old
  Person of Brussels, is in the style of a perpetuum mobile, a "perpetual
  motion piece, a style of music characterized by an unrelenting rhythmic and
  melodic movement (also known as a moto perpetuo in Italian). The perpetual
  motion in my setting of Lears limerick represents the Old Person of
  Brussels himself as he rushed through the town, knocking most people
  down. Because of the frenetic nature of the musical setting, one might even
  call this a moto frenetico. The namesake musical figure (passed between the
  basses and baritones) has a headlong, reckless, staggering motion, befitting
  a person who lived upon Brandy and Mussels. While the basses and baritones
  are busy engaging their marathon musical material, the tenors present the
  lines of Lears limerick. Upon singing the text fully through once, the music
  becomes even more frenetic, with the tenors singing the entire text again,
  now in double-time. The only let-up in the forward motion is on the
  repetition of the line he knocked most people down, perhaps indicating that
  the main character in Lears limerick might have paused for a moment to
  survey the mayhem he had wrought, only to resume his seemingly pointless,
  headlong rush through town. The very pointless nature of his behavior is one
  of the most effective aspects of Lears limerick: at no time in the poem does
  he provide even a hint of motivation for the main characters eccentric
  conduct.

There was an Old Person of Brussels

TTBB Octavo

"Welcome Song" is a quodlibet based on traditional songs from
  various major world cultures from Muehleisen's cantata, "Borders,"
  the themes of which are immigration, how we treat the stranger amongst us,
  and the borders between us that both divide and connect us on so many
  levels.  Many cultures have the
  tradition of the "Welcome Song" in 
  which the host sings a song of their own people and the guest sings a
  song from their culture in return, a truly beautiful gesture and tradition.
  Beginning with a Salish song of welcome from the indigenous First People of
  the Pacific Northwest, Muehleisen weaves together and superimposes
  traditional songs from Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to represent
  the beautiful tapestry and melting pot of American immigrants. The
  traditional songs used in Welcome Song include As a beam o'er the face of the
  waters may glow, a traditional Irish folksong; Fanga Alafia, a traditional
  African Welcome Song; Arirang, a traditional Korean folksong; and a dance
  tune from Arabic Andalusia. In addition to this choir and piano reduction,
  the work is also available in its original scoring for 2 violins, viola,
  cello, double bass, timpani, percussion, and piano.

Welcome Song

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Peace, Night, Sleep

RAH! from Eat Your Vegetables! - Set One

There was an Old Person of Brussels

Welcome Song