Issue No. 32: Laura Strickling's 40@40 Project
Soprano Laura Strickling. Photo credit: Blue Glass Photography
Soprano Laura Dixon Strickling is celebrated for her work on the concert and recital stage - she has performed at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, National Sawdust, Trinity Church on Wall Street, Washington National Cathedral, Tanglewood Music Festival, Ravinia Music Festival, and more.
In November 2019 she made the realization that, while being strong advocate for contemporary music, she had never actively commissioned any new works. She writes:
This surprised me because the collaborative relationship between singer and composer is one of my favorite parts of my job.
After some thought, I decided to aim high - to commission 40 new songs as a birthday present to myself for my 40th birthday on April 2nd, 2021. That quickly became, “40 songs by 40 composers.” And now I’m over 40 songs because there are so many amazing people I want to work with! The parameters are specific, but broad: One 2-5 minute song scored for soprano and piano. Text choice up to the composer, with my approval, in any language. The results have been beyond exciting!
The 40@40 Project is the beginning of a personal mission to commission with intentionality and to encourage and help other performing musicians (or music lovers!) to do the same. If we want the future of song to be bright, we need to be a part of making it happen. I want to help people understand what goes into commissioning, demystify recording and publishing processes and personally contribute to the creation of new song literature for the future. So often we think of singing as a solo journey, but it’s really about community and collaboration. As I step into my fifth decade, this is my way of recommitting my dedication to the song community.
Some of the composers include Tom Cipullo, Emily Doolittle, Melissa Dunphy, Marti Epstein, Kurt Erickson, Daniel Felsenfeld, Daron Hagen, Juliana Hall, Jennifer Jolly, Lori Laitman, Libby Larsen, Kala Pierson, Lauren Spavelko, Dennis Tobenski, and Ed Windels. On the actual date of Laura’s 40th birthday, she was kind enough to extend the invitation to me to compose a song as part of this project.
Almost immediately I decided to set lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest for Laura’s song, specifically words spoke by Caliban to Stephano and Trinculo in Act III, scene ii:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
As with many of my recent compositions, the musical style sits somewhere in the intersection of contemporary classical music, modern jazz, and indie pop/musical theatre.
The progression in measures 1-3 that repeats in measures 4-5, for example, consists of a D minor-minor seventh chord in second inversion, G augmented major seventh chord, F# dominant seventh chord (with a flat 9 added), and E major 9 sharp 11. Taken as a whole, these four sonorities exhaust the entire twelve-tone aggregate with the exception of pitch-class G# (notably absent from the conclusive E major 9 sharp 11).
The B minor ninth chord that accompanies the entrance of the soprano in measure 6 has the seventh of the chord in the bass - and doubled at that! This tone moves down while everything else is retained to create a G major seventh sharp 11 chord. It’s precisely this kind of “familiar sounds in unfamiliar contexts” that has been driving much of my later compositional curiosity (stirred no doubt by my long love of Stravinsky, Ligeti, and Zappa).
Be Not Afraid by Alan Theisen, measures 4-9 (click to enlarge)