Orchestra

Broken Ground was commissioned by the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, the Iowa Sesquicentennial Commission, and Grinnell College in honor of the sesquicentennials in 1996 of the State of Iowa and Grinnell College. Its creation brought together 6 poets, a composer, and a large network of performers and supporters in pursuit of a common goal: to reflect on the relationships between the people and landscape of the prairie Midwest through the arts of music and poetry. In creating the work, we sought to express the beauty and harshness of the prairie as well as the intensity of the human response to its rigors and fruitfulness.

All six collaborating poets write with a distinctive lyricism about the midwestern landscape. They include poet-farmer Michael Carey from southwest Iowa, Native American poet and novelist Ray Young Bear from the Mesquakie Settlement of the Fox-Sauk Tribe, poet and essayist Mary Swander from Iowa State University whose work often focuses on the Amish culture around Kalona, poet and novelist Paula Smith of the Grinnell College faculty, songwriter and humorist Dan Hunter of Des Moines, and National Book Award-winning poet Ed Hirsch, a Grinnell College graduate from the University of Houston. In creating this work for the Iowa and Grinnell College Sesquicentennials, the poets and I sought to find literary metaphors and musical styles that transcend the boundaries of our region while remaining firmly rooted in the rolling landscape of the prairies.

Work on Broken Ground began in the summer of 1994, after favorable responses to the idea from the Des Moines Symphony, the Iowa Sesquicentennial Commission, and Grinnell College. In an early meeting, we settled on the theme of the four elements — earth, air, fire, and water — as a unifying focus for the different poetic voices. As one of the poets said, “That’s what all our poems are about anyway!”

Over the ensuing months, the poets sent me dozens of texts to read through, and I began to circulate those that I found most suggestive musically. Several of the poets chose to work explicitly off of each others’ words, resulting in an unusual degree of cohesiveness among the imagery used by the different writers. Michael Carey’s “Once when the ground was holy,” for instance, becomes “The ground was holy but the wind was harsh” in Edward Hirsch’s retelling. Hirsch’s “the wind was harsh” transforms into Dan Hunter’s “Only the wind.” Hunter’s “graveyard’s broken ground” becomes Mary Swander’s “When the ground was broken.” And Carey’s resurrecting blades of grass become Swander’s “blades of grass turning brown, turning green.” Listening to these different poetic voices conversing with one another was one of the great delights of working with these marvelous words.

As I began contemplating the music, my first task was to arrange the poems into a coherent and musically promising succession. In doing so, I tried to listen both to the sense of the words and to their sound. Ray Young Bear’s watery snow and ice (movement 1) suggest a primeval landscape from which all else emerges. Michael Carey’s “Once When the Ground Was Holy” (movement 2) depicts a holy and magical ground. It and the next poem — Paul Smith’s “Rhizomes” (outer sections of movement 3) — provide the base from which arises the variegated life of Edward Hirsch’s “Iowa Flora” (middle section of movement 3.) Smith’s poem provides the “cradling web” for Hirsch’s flora, just as it frames it musically at the start and end of movement 3. “Ocean of grass” (movement 4) ascends above the ground and into the air for a poignant picture of wind, fire, loneliness, and loss. Dan Hunter’s “Only the Wind” (movement 5, beginning) portrays a triumphant wind sweeping eternally over gravestones. And Mary Swander’s synoptic “When the Ground Was Broken” (movement 5, conclusion) steps back through earth, air, water, and fire, ending with a hopeful image of “blades of grass… turning green.” One hears, in this last line, a response to the Midwest’s great flood of 1993, depicted resoundingly in the poem’s third stanza: “every cloud darkened and the rain came rushing down, the ground broken away in chunks, floating downstream.”

Faced with such potent words, what is a composer to do? Listen, ponder, and let the words take command. I often found myself notating and renotating rhythms irrespective of pitches until I felt that the cadence of the words was just right. I listened for suggestive phrases to establish the musical style of each movement. The undulating lake and cool quiet springs of Young Bear’s ice-glazed landscape suggested a certain kind of music; the galloping horses of Carey’s holy ground suggested another; and the driving underground energy of Smith’s rhizomes still a third. I engaged in evident word-painting. When “the shooting stars fall down and down again” in Swander’s text, the musical lines do the same. When the insistent wind blows over the stones in Hunter’s poem, you hear its swooping lines and capricious rhythms. When the chorus sings of an “underground constellation” in Swander’s text, the pitches follow the contour of the Big Dipper, first upside-down and then right-side-up.

Movement 1, “The Ice-Glazed Landscape,” emerges from the icy cold sound of the crotale (small tuned cymbal). The texture thickens gradually and hopefully as the chorus intones the phrase “We lived here once inside and along these ancient hills.” But after this brief moment of warmth, the music settles back into the icy coolness of its opening.

After this introductory movement, movement 2 (“Once When the Ground Was Holy”) settles in to a steadier, more energetic motion. The meter is compound — beats subdividing into groups of three notes rather than two — inspired by the playful galloping of the horses described in Carey’s text, the jig-like rhythm that I imagine for the dancing blades of grass at the end, and the holiness of the similarly metered closing section of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion which I heard in concert as I was working on this piece. The interweaving oboe melodies of this movement also reflect Bach’s influence. Carey’s line “butcher, baker, beggar man, thief” reappears in Swander’s concluding poem as “butcher, baker, beggarwoman, thief,” and the two lines share the same music.

Movement 3, “Rhizomes and Flora,” weaves together two poems depicting the scenes below and above the prairie soil surface. Smith’s “silent force… working underground” is depicted through driving rhythms set up by the low brass. Hirsch’s contrasts between native and alien flora are reflected in harmonies that alternate between natural, stable chords and slightly twisted, more tension-filled ones. The first violins play a prominent role throughout this middle section. Hirsch’s poem is dedicated to Iowan Amy Clampitt, a MacArthur “Genius” Award recipient and keen observer of nature who died in 1994. The closing line concerning “the shining, cup-flowered grass of Parnassus” leads smoothly back to Smith’s poem with its “waving sea of grasses.”

Movement 4, “Ocean of Grass,” is a poignant and somber meditation on incidents taken from the diaries of prairie frontierswomen and assembled by Hirsch into a poetic structure of great incisiveness. Its villanelle form (19 lines with the first and third lines of the opening stanza appearing alternately as the concluding lines of succeeding stanzas and coming together at the end) gives rise to a musical counterpart. Line 1 is set to a hymn-like depiction of holiness and harshness, while line three is distinguished by an opening point of imitation characterized by the interval of a rising 4th. The hymn-like music, especially, grows gradually richer and more elaborate with each of its recurrences. The movement closes with a dirge-like, slow march accompanying the lines “Think of her sometimes when you pace the earth, our mother, where she was laid to rest.”

Movement 5, “When the Ground Was Broken,” begins with Dan Hunter’s “Only the Wind” in energetic, shifting meters driven by a prominent xylophone line. After a quieter, more legato section for the line “Now the stones lie silent and smooth…,” the opening, rhythmic music returns briefly, leading directly to the setting of Mary Swander’s “When the Ground Was Broken.” This closing music is a tour de force for the chorus, involving several fugal sections, echoes of earlier musical and poetic ideas, and an impelling drive towards its energetic conclusion.

The May 1996 Des Moines Symphony performances of Broken Ground marked the complete work’s premiere. Excerpts were performed previously with violin and piano accompaniment, notably at Carnegie Hall in March 1996. The Des Moines performances were supported, in part, by funds from the Iowa Arts Council.

Be Here Now
composed 2024
duration 16 minutes

This work for ten players fits in a chamber music genre variously known as a dectet, decet, or tentet. Ensembles of this size vary widely in instrumentation. Some of the best-known employ standard wind quintet and string quartet plus double bass, resembling a mini-orchestra. Be Here Now follows this model and, like an orchestra, requires a conductor.

Inspired by sonic imagery found, surprisingly, in a hiking guidebook, the music begins with small groups of hikers setting out at slow but steady and then double-time paces. Soon, instrument groups associate with components of the natural environment: wind instruments with rocks, for instance, and strings with trees. The music responds to guidebook author Edward Henry’s evocations of bellowing boulders, bold staccato rocks, muted forests, lifting melodies, spreading counter-melodies, and harmonizing ridges along the path to a rock promontory in New York’s Shawangunk Mountains known as Gertrude’s Nose. “The crescendos of rock continue to grow, and the forest interludes fade into the background as the land builds to a climax,” culminating in what Henry calls the “final stanza” from the “natural orchestra” (Gunks Trails, 2003).

As for the title of Be Here Now, it comes from a hand-painted sign of mysterious origin greeting hikers near the start of a path to a wilderness area near Santa Fé, New Mexico. Its advice to “be here now” is as germane to music listeners as to hikers. Forego the distractions of modern life and be fully present in this place and this moment. Happy hiking!

Poems for Broken Ground, Oratorio for Choir and Orchestra

by Jonathan Chenette

Composed 1996

1. Ray Young Bear, “The Ice-Glazed Landscape of Our Grandfathers” (1993)

From whence the day-light begins,

toward the cardinal point of morning-

talking mother, the ghostly lake

undulates in the bluish-gray haze

of the valley. And although the sun

reflects there are no waves breaking on

rocky shore.

We lived here once inside and along

these ancient hills. There were springs,

cool and quiet, that served as doorways

to women-deities who used attraction

to alter inevitability.

But all that remains are the shiny hills,

the ones that are covered with snow

and ice, creating a watery illusion.

2. Michael Carey, “Once When the Ground Was Holy” (1994)

Once when the

ground was holy,

you could enter it

and come out again;

the dust that

covered your dust

did no harm;

the light that

entered your bones

when all went dark

sent you out again

into the world

with dew, with dew

on the tips of your wings.

III.

Once when the

ground was holy,

horses, more horses

than you could believe,

would walk

through leaves

and make

no sound.

In autumn

you would

find them

in the pasture

or on the wild hillside

where they played

and grazed

drinking deeply

from some

strange water.

Sometimes, when

the weather

was right, they would

let you ride them

if you wished,

if you wished

long enough

and hard enough,

if you

remembered how.

VIII.

Once when the
ground was holy,
people left —
butcher, baker, beggar man, thief,
saint, sinner, scholar —
wherever they were,
whatever they were doing,
whoever they were doing it with
when ice melted,
when brown turned green,
when wind came and came
and blew the souls
right out of them,
when each blade of grass
danced naked
at its own resurrection.

3A. Paula V. Smith, “Rhizomes” (1994)

Anchor and balance for the waving sea

of grasses bending in the prairie wind,

a silent force is working underground:

engines driving the prairie from beneath,

inches below and only inches deep.

Invisibly below, the grass advances,

stems growing outward, under the land,

rising, spreading, racing, following–

sending forth new culms and rootlets

from the ends of tips and nodes.

All that is prairie sleeps in this old hammock,

the rugged fabric of a dense earth layer

threaded all through with interwoven rhizomes,

not rooted deep, but in continual motion;

a cradling web for all that breathes above.

Edward Hirsch, Iowa Suite (1994)

3B. “Iowa Flora”

(In Memory of Amy Clampitt)

We thought we were having an indigenous childhood

splashed with Indian paintbrush and grassy knolls

thickened by birdfoot violets and ordinary goldenrod,

but we kept finding noxious alien weeds in the hills–

quackgrass and thistle, European morning glory

that no state legislation could control.

We inherited pioneer grasses high as a prairie

schooner, but there were also fresh settlements

of bog flowers and refugees from the sea-

coast marshes, silky-leaved Virginia plants

and Texas marigolds, imported seeds and ornamentals,

weeds from the wasted villages of other continents.

Nature consists of immigrants and mongrels,

and you taught us how to prize coincidence and impurity

in wayward fields, the deserted and marginal…

I went down to the swamp to mourn for you, Amy,

and it was as if Providence led me to the place

where I stumbled upon yellow swamp betony

and pink foxglove mingled with something nameless

(unfathomable the mystery before us, you said)

and the shining, cup-flowered grass of Parnassus.

4. “Ocean of Grass”

The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh

and unbroken prairie stretched for hundreds of miles

so that all she could see was an ocean of grass.

Some days she got so lonely she went outside

and nestled among the sheep, for company.

The ground was holy, but the wind was harsh

and prairie fires swept across the plains,

lighting up the country like a vast tinderbox

until all she could see was an ocean of flames.

She went three years without viewing a tree.

When her husband finally took her on a timber run

she called the ground holy and the wind harsh

and got down on her knees and wept inconsolably,

who lived in a sod hut for thirty more years

until the world dissolved in an ocean of grass.

Think of her sometimes when you pace the earth,

our mother, where she was laid to rest.

The ground was holy but the wind was harsh

for those who drowned in an ocean of grass.

5A. Dan Hunter, “Only the Wind” (1995)

Only the wind bends the grass

on the graveyard’s broken ground.

Only the wind cradles the marble stones.

Only the wind calls out the names

once whispered in love,

once shivered in fear,

once bellowed mightily in dreams.

Only the wind sings

of each river of life

dried to a name

etched on a stone.

Now the stones lie

silent and smooth,

all names erased by the wind.

Only the wind cries.

Only the wind sings.

Only the wind bends the grass.

Only the wind cradles the stones.

Only the wind crosses the ground.

Only the wind never ends.

Only the wind, only the wind.

5B. Mary Swander, “When the Ground Was Broken ” (1994)

When the ground was broken–

the plow, the blade,

the long straight furrow–

all that burrowed into the earth was song.

The big, the little bluestem bent down.

The big, the little dipper scooped up

the birds that once blackened the sky,

scooped up the words that remained unspoken,

and the shooting stars fell

down and down again,

an underground constellation,

their light, the light of the unnamed,

the untamed, their light,

the light of dark tunnels,

the light of worms, broken,

no longer our maids, no longer

our final companions in the end

when the blade digs deeper,

the mice running out of the house,

and the dirt packs down over our faces.

II.

When the ground was broken,

the ponds, the swamps drained,

the horses lifted into the air,

their wings spread over the pastures,

the fences and posts.

Buckets dipped into wells,

the faces in the water echoing back their sounds

over and over the land

until the ground was broken

and the dust covered our shoes,

sweeping through the cracks in our skin.

We held it all in our pockets, our hands–

the dirt, the dung, the words–

and what we carried with us

the horses had known all along,

their song, the stampede of the herd–

fetlock and hoof–

their song, the roll of thunder over

the ridge, the plain, and then

the rain, the blessed rain.

III.

And the rain came tinkling down–

butcher, baker, beggarwoman, thief–

on the earth like dropping coins–

saint, sinner, scholar,

and the river came flooding over

the plains until every seed sprouted

until every stalk thickened into a fist

until every fist poked through the clouds

until every cloud darkened and the rain

came rushing down, the ground broken

away in chunks, floating downstream.

For grasses and roots gone,

there was nothing left to hold it in place.

There was nothing left to put a face on the land

and its dream returned to the mud,to the turtle, the hard outer shell.

It burrowed back into the earth,

and the river came flooding over

the meadow, the plains, the waters

rushing and filling every crack and tunnel.

IV.

What happened to the fire?

What happened to the rope?

What happened to the flames

rolling over the plains,

the bucket lowering into the well?

What words were left in the water?

What words were left in the roots,

the stems, the stalks that remained?

Our hope is in the ashes.

Our hope is in the smoke.

Our hope is in our own hands.

Our hope is in the mice

running out of the house.

Our hope is in the turtle

pushing its head out of its shell.

Our hope is in the worms

and their hope in the dirt.

Our hope is in the blades of grass

turning brown, turning green,

turning green, green, green.

Oh Millersville! for soprano & orchestra
premiered 1992
excerpted version incl. songs 1-4 & 9
duration 15 minutes

Oh Millersville! consists of 9 songs to poems written purportedly by a 12-year-old Iowa schoolgirl named Fern Gravel. The songs were composed in 1990 and orchestrated a year later, on a commission from the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra.

The 58 poems of the original Oh Millersville! were actually written by James Norman Hall, who published the book as a literary hoax in 1941. Best known as the author of Mutiny on the Bounty, Hall had been away from Iowa for many years when he wrote this light-hearted tribute to his boyhood home of Colfax, near Des Moines. The songs, like the poems, aim to portray a vivid picture of various aspects of small town life, and their musical styles, ranging from Schubert to Schoenberg, correspond to young Fern’s own eclectic eye.

The following brief descriptions will introduce you to some of the musical elements of the 5 songs included in this performance. The Journey to Come alternates between Victorian parlor song and free-flowing 20th century through-composition, corresponding to Fern’s alternating moods of sentimental remembrance and wanderlust. Winter Music employs a musical style inspired by the North Indian khyal genre of vocal music – a sympathetic reference to all those poor countries “without a bobsled or a sleigh.” Arithmetic Again employs a mathematically derived series of notes and numerically expressed meters such as 2+2+3 over 4. Iowa is a rousing, patriotic march, featuring the brass and percussion. And Before the Looking Glass is a reflective goodbye, employing series of notes in the melody with their mirror images in the accompaniment.

Be Here Now
composed 2024
duration 16 minutes

Poems for Oh Millersville for Soprano and Orchestra by Jonathan Chenette
Texts by Fern Gravel (a.k.a. James Norman Hall)
from the book Oh Millersville! (Muscatine: Prairie Press, 1941)
used with the permission of Nancy Rutgers and Conrad Hall

1.The Journey to Come

Millersville, oh, Millersville!
That is my home and I like it, but still
I wish that once in a while I could go
To cities like Omaha and St. Jo.
You get tired of living in such a small town
With so few streets for walking around.
I would like to visit some larger places
And see many thousands of different faces
Of people I do not know at all
That you cannot see in a town so small.
But I wouldn’t want to go for good;
Just for a while, and then I would
Want to come back to Millersville,
Because I love my home and I hope I always will.
But I love trains better than everything;
I would rather travel than anything.
Next summer I am going nearly out of this state,
To Keokuk; I can hardly wait,
On the Mississippi River. We will stay two days.
It will be the first time I have been such a ways
From Millersville. I hate to come home
So soon, but I guess we will have to come.
The convention my father is going to
Is for only that long, and when it is through
He must come straight back to his business here,
And I’ll have to stay home all the rest of the year.

2. Winter Music

Oh, it is wonderful in Millersville
On many a winter night,
When the ground is covered with snow
And the moon is shining so bright.

You can hear the sleigh-bells jingling
Everywhere around.
I don’t think there could be
A more beautiful sound.

There are many foreign countries
Where it is summer all the time,
But I would rather live in Millersville
And hear the sleigh-bells chime.

I couldn’t stand it in a country
Without a bobsled or a sleigh.
I would like to see those places
But not to go to stay.

3. Arithmetic Again

Mr. Hendrixon said, “Fern, it doesn’t matter at all
If maybe you should not pass next fall
Because of arithmetic. Do not worry about it.
People can get along without it.

You are good in reading and spelling and geography,
And these are the important ones, you see.
Grammar is very important too.
I wouldn’t bother about arithmetic if I was you.”

4. Iowa

Of all the different states in our country so grand
Iowa is the best, and that is my land.
It raises more corn than any other state
And we ship thousands of hogs and cattle to Chicago by freight.

We have only one poet so far as I know,
Mr. Beyers, who wrote some songs a long time ago.
He was very famous in the Civil War.
“Marching Through Georgia” was one. He wrote many more.

I am writing another kind of poetry,
And some of my poems are beautiful to me.
I hope, some day, people will travel
To see the home of the poetess, Fern Gravel,

And then I’ll remember the day I wrote this verse
About Iowa, my state, and the famous Mr. Beyers.

9. Before the Looking-Glass

I almost never look at myself
Except when I am brushing my hair.
I know, of course, that I am not pretty
But I do not really care.

I am not going to get married;
I expect to travel,
And people will come to hear the lectures
Of the famous Fern Gravel.

That is how I will make the living;
I will not have any special home.
I will live in hotels in the different cities
Where only my intimate friends can come.

And I will be the authoress
Of many many books.
If I am famous for my lectures and poetry
It won’t matter so much about my looks.

Oh Millersville! for soprano & orchestra
orchestrated 1991, premiered 1992
duration 22 minutes

Oh Millersville! consists of 9 songs to poems written purportedly by a 12-year-old Iowa schoolgirl named Fern Gravel. The songs were composed for soprano and piano in 1990 and orchestrated a year later, on a commission from the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra.

The 58 poems of the original Oh Millersville! were actually written by James Norman Hall, who published the book as a literary hoax in 1941. Best known as the author of Mutiny on the Bounty, Hall had been away from Iowa for many years when he wrote this light-hearted tribute to his boyhood home of Colfax, near Des Moines. The songs, like the poems, aim to portray a vivid picture of various aspects of small town life, and their musical styles, ranging from Schubert to Schoenberg, correspond to young Fern’s own eclectic eye.

The following brief descriptions will introduce you to prominent musical elements of each song. The Journey to Come alternates between Victorian parlor song and free-flowing 20th century through-composition, corresponding to Fern’s alternating moods of sentimental remembrance and wanderlust. Winter Music employs a musical style inspired by the North Indian khyal genre of vocal music – a sympathetic reference to all those poor countries “without a bobsled or a sleigh.” Arithmetic Again employs a mathematically derived series of notes and numerically expressed meters such as 2+2+3 over 4. Iowa is a rousing, patriotic march, featuring the brass and percussion. Winter Complaints uses a solo xylophone to capture the bone-chilling cold of the season. The Electric Button tinkles with the sound of bells interrupted by mischievous silences. Places is a short and accelerating trip of the imagination to Nebraska and beyond. The Suicide is Schubertian melodrama at a headlong pace. And Before the Looking Glass is a reflective goodbye, employing series of notes in the melody with their mirror images in the accompaniment.

Be Here Now
composed 2024
duration 16 minutes

1.The Journey to Come

2. Winter Music

Oh, it is wonderful in Millersville
On many a winter night,
When the ground is covered with snow
And the moon is shining so bright.

You can hear the sleigh-bells jingling
Everywhere around.
I don’t think there could be
A more beautiful sound.

There are many foreign countries
Where it is summer all the time,
But I would rather live in Millersville
And hear the sleigh-bells chime.

I couldn’t stand it in a country
Without a bobsled or a sleigh.
I would like to see those places
But not to go to stay.

3. Arithmetic Again

Mr. Hendrixon said, “Fern, it doesn’t matter at all
If maybe you should not pass next fall
Because of arithmetic. Do not worry about it.
People can get along without it.

You are good in reading and spelling and geography,
And these are the important ones, you see.
Grammar is very important too.
I wouldn’t bother about arithmetic if I was you.”

4. Iowa

Of all the different states in our country so grand
Iowa is the best, and that is my land.
It raises more corn than any other state
And we ship thousands of hogs and cattle to Chicago by freight.

We have only one poet so far as I know,
Mr. Beyers, who wrote some songs a long time ago.
He was very famous in the Civil War.
“Marching Through Georgia” was one. He wrote many more.

I am writing another kind of poetry,
And some of my poems are beautiful to me.
I hope, some day, people will travel
To see the home of the poetess, Fern Gravel,

And then I’ll remember the day I wrote this verse
About Iowa, my state, and the famous Mr. Beyers.

5. Winter Complaints

The worst thing in Iowa
Is the awful cold and snow.
Yesterday the thermometer
Was twenty-two below.

Even right by the stove
You could see your breath,
And if you went out doors
You nearly froze to death.
If you don’t wrap up warm
On such cold winter days
You are nearly sure
To freeze your hands and face.

Sometimes in school
The children have to sit
In their overcoats, the stove
Doesn’t seem to help a bit.

Your lips get all chapped
And you have cold-sores.
The wind goes right through
The storm windows and storm doors.

On the worst winter nights
The only thing you can do
Is to go right to bed
When your supper is through.

I love Iowa more
Than I could any other state,
But winter is a thing
I sometimes almost hate.

It lasts so long,
And you think it never will go.
But it isn’t always so cold
As twenty-two below.

6. The Electric Button

In the city of Des Moines
There are street-cars everywhere,
And I went with my father and mother
To the State Agricultural Fair.

We were gone two days
And slept one night at the Kirkwood hotel;
And if you wanted anything
You pressed the electric bell.

My father said, “Fern, just push this button
And the bell-boy will come, you see.”
And sure enough, he came in a minute
And my father said, “Bring some cigars to me.”

Our room was on the fourth floor,
And in the office far below
There was a glass case with many numbers
Of the hotel rooms, you know.

And if anyone in the night
Woke up from their slumber
And wanted anything,
An arrow showed the number
Of the room they were in
Where the button was pressed.
I called the bell-boy several times
And he called me a pest.

He said, “If you do that again
I will tell your father.
Don’t you think I have enough to do
Without all this extra bother?”

But I really could not help it.
It seemed wonderful to call
Someone far below me
By pressing a button on the wall.

7. Places

One of the places that I have not seen
Is the beautiful city of Muscatine;
But some day I am going to go,
And also to Kansas City and St. Joe,
Missouri, and Omaha, Nebraska.
But the longest journey I expect to make
Will be to Alaska.

8. The Suicide

There are so many things to write,
I don’t have the time.
Now I will tell about
The suicide crime.

Mr. Reasoner was a farmer
Who lived not far from here.
His wife was much younger
And they had two children dear.

But many times his wife would go
To Des Moines to stay;
And Mr. Reasoner never knew
How long she would be away.

She didn’t have any relations
Living in that place
And for her to go so often
People thought was a disgrace.

She was gone for a whole week
Just before Thanksgiving,
And when she came back
Her husband wasn’t living.

He took their two children
To stay at a neighbor’s farm.
He had done this before
So it caused no alarm.

But two days afterward
The other farmer went there
And found Mr. Reasoner in the barn
Hanging in the air.

He hung himself with a halter
Because he was sorry he had got married.
And when Mrs. Reasoner came home
Her husband was dead and buried.

9. Before the Looking-Glass

I almost never look at myself
Except when I am brushing my hair.
I know, of course, that I am not pretty
But I do not really care.

I am not going to get married;
I expect to travel,
And people will come to hear the lectures
Of the famous Fern Gravel.

That is how I will make the living;
I will not have any special home.
I will live in hotels in the different cities
Where only my intimate friends can come.

And I will be the authoress
Of many many books.
If I am famous for my lectures and poetry
It won’t matter so much about my looks.

Rural Symphony for orchestra
composed 2000
duration 16 minutes

Commissioned by the Blanden Memorial Art Museum in Fort Dodge, IA for the Fort Dodge Area Symphony as part of the American Composer Forum’s “Continental Harmony” project funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Program notes

Rural Symphony was the fruit of an eighteen-month collaboration between the Fort Dodge Area Symphony, the Blanden Memorial Art Museum, and composer Jonathan Chenette. It was Iowa’s official contribution to the nationwide Continental Harmony program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Continental Harmony linked communities with composers in each state to celebrate the millennium through the creation of original musical works. The theme of the Iowa project was “Iowa Impressions: A Celebration of the Arts in Rural America.”

In response to a Continental Harmony prospectus sent out by the American Composers Forum, the Fort Dodge Area Symphony and Blanden Memorial Art Museum submitted a joint proposal which led to Fort Dodge’s selection as Iowa’s host community. The Symphony and the Blanden in turn selected the composer from among eleven nationwide who submitted proposals for the Iowa project. Rural Symphony became the centerpiece of “IMPRESSIONS: A Sense of Place– Rural Arts & Culture”– encompassing a juried art exhibition, writing workshop, musical performances, and theatrical presentations celebrating the arts in rural America and organized by the Blanden Memorial Art Museum with support from various Fort Dodge sponsors and contributors.

When composer Jonathan Chenette visited the Fort Dodge area in the spring of 2000 to visit with local farmers, a dominant topic was the unsteady economy – the massive alteration that has occurred, how it has affected rural America, and how Iowans fit into the drastically changing global economy. His three-movement symphony reflects on these themes, evoking the heroism and heartache of farming as well as the enduring beauty of the land.

Movement I, “Row Crops and Livestock”, grew out of a conversation with the farm families of Irvy and Jeanneen Badger & Norma and Maurice Field, in rural Moorland, IA. They spoke realistically and soberly about the changes that have buffeted the farm economy, but they balanced that with an infectious good humor and an obvious love for what they do. Like their lives, the music of this movement is alternately heroic, lyrical, and filled with irony and surprise.

Movement II, “Milking Time”, was inspired by a visit to one of the last dairy farms in Webster County, where Sonja Searcy spoke about the rhythms and joys of her family’s dairy operation near Callender, IA. Between the three-hour morning and evening milking sessions, Sonja finds time to practice her profession as a visual artist. The three-part form of the music mirrors the rhythms of Sonja’s life, marked off in five-measure groupings in 12/8 time corresponding to the hours of her work day. Percussive evocations of the milking equipment pervade the outer sections, leading to a mechanistic march. In the middle, though, there is time for art, in the form of a lyrical interlude.

The final movement, “Becoming Prairie”, was inspired by the sights and sounds of the wild prairie remnants still to be found in the Iowa countryside and the balm they can provide for harried, modern lives. Many of its musical ideas were notated from insect and bird sounds recorded at Kalsow Prairie near Fort Dodge and drastically slowed down with the aid of a computer. The effect is of a vibrant, magical, comforting landscape akin to that imagined by John Peterson in his poem “Becoming Prairie in Dickinson County” [Voices on the Landscape (Parkersburg, IA: Loess Hills Books, 1996, p. 108]:

In my mind I am able to just lie down
on the prairie sod
and be original and indigenous
concealed under butterflies
and nodding seedheads
while the air, thick with life,
moans like a man getting sleepy…

For now in my mind
I have given up my job, my house,
and all my enemies have forgotten me,
now that I have gone to prairie…

Continental Harmony was a partnership of the American Composers Forum and the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional funds provided by the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Land O’ Lakes Foundation. Continental Harmony was an Associate Partner of the White House Millennium Council. Additional funding for the Iowa project was provided by The Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, the Iowa Community Cultural Grant program, and the Blanden Charitable Foundation. Rural Symphony premiered in Fort Dodge on October 15, 2000, with the Fort Dodge Area Symphony conducted by Daniel Kleinknecht.