Sounding (2024)

Sounding is a short concerto for piano and orchestra. Written for my friend and fellow Vermonter Adam Tendler, it consists of a set of variations on four tunes by Justin Morgan: Amanda (Death, like an overflowing stream), Montgomery (Early, my God, without delay, I haste to see thy face), Huntington (Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I), and Sounding Joy (Come, sound his praise abroad). Justin Morgan, a horse breeder, local politician, and composer, has always fascinated me; his tunes, first published in Federal Harmony in 1790, are uniquely American, forceful, and raw settings of versified psalms. The versification itself, by Isaac Watts, is quite severe and filled with more apocalyptic imagery than other translations into verse; “Death, like an overflowing stream sweeps us away” or “Long for a cooling stream at hand, and they must drink or die” are just some of the evocative phrases in the four tunes I chose. The piece is organized into four sections, played without pause. The first section, Amanda, is aggressive and fluid in equal measure, giving way to the second section, Montgomery, which transposes the tune into a delicate matrix between the piano and the winds. The third section, Huntington, contains the clearest iteration of the original tune, but wildly reharmonized and subjected to motoric interruptions from the winds and rude interjections from low brass. Sounding Joy is kinetic, scary and ecstatic all at once, and after a fusillade of fast gestures from the winds and solo piano, we hear, in the form of a coda, an echo of Montgomery.

‒ NICO MUHLY