Into the Wordless

In the score you find a piano reduction for the rehearsals.

The percussion instruments (bells, wind chimes, suspended cymbal) can be played by members of the choir.

The composer about his piece:

"Into the Wordless" compares two poems by Walt Whitman, both from his landmark publication "Leaves of Grass". These two disparate texts fit together in a hauntingly symbiotic way, and in this setting they are compared musically in two distinct styles that represent a dual-reality experienced by the narrator. As the poems are interwoven section by section, the plagal nature of "Gliding Over All" joins seamlessly with the pa n-diatonicpatterns in "A Clear Midnight", in particular their shared weight of A-flat major – historically theorized as the “key of the grave” (Christian Schubart’s Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, 1806) – albeit in different harmonic contexts. (Daniel Elder)