Peace, Night, Sleep

"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.