How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart (mezzo-soprano version) (2006)

Composer Note
This song, which sets text by Jonathan Breit, is an attempt to give expression, in some way, to the unfathomable trauma of 9/11. I envisioned a sense of grace in how New York came together to rescue and heal itself, something I experienced firsthand living in lower Manhattan when the event occurred. I’ve never experienced the kindness and support of strangers as I did on that day and in the difficult months that followed, and I thought of this as I wrote the music.

How graceful some things are, falling apart.
Stopped clocks, a dancer tumbling, or a breaking heart.
A missing child, an empty plate,
the rust on a lost wind-up toy.
A shattered glass.
Or looming towers crumbling
into dust.

— Sarah Kirkland Snider