Beautiful

Premiered on 5/14/21 by Mr. Phillip Claassen and the Grove City Christian High School Symphonic Band.

Program Note

There are many moments in someone's life that make them reflect on who they are and the experiences that shaped them. Recently, I found myself reflecting on the impact my grandmother had on my life. She, along with my parents, was in attendance for almost every major moment in my life from birthdays to graduation, and notably, musical performances. Without fail she would approach me at the end of a performance and tell me how beautiful she thought the music had sounded.

My grandmother has been deaf for her entire life. I would joke with her about her appraisal of the music, but she always insisted that what she had experienced was beautiful. The extent of her experience was in feeling the vibrations of the music through a variety of different items, like a balloon, which she and my parents (also deaf and endlessly supportive) would inflate and hold on to during a concert.

Recently, I thought about this a lot. With my grandmother's health failing, I considered what her musical experience may have truly been like as an audience member. I experimented with antiphonal performance early in my compositional career by writing music for bass clarinets and providing the audience with balloons so that they might gain an insight into what the experience of my grandmother was during a performance. A performance wherein she could not hear a single note, but feel every vibration through her balloon.

This music is my next attempt to create a window into her world. You will feel the rumbling of a bass drum placed out in the concert hall where my grandmother would have been sitting, listening. Feeling. You will experience deafness in the moment where most music has it's most beautiful, heart-wrenching sonic moment. This music instead creates a moment where you suddenly hear the sounds my grandmother would have told me were beautiful.