How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart (tenor 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