- Sarah Kirkland Snider
How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart (soprano version) (2006)
- G Schirmer Inc (World)
- S + pf
- Soprano
- 4 min
- Jonathan Breit
- English
Programme Note
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