Interview with Composer Ellen Gilson Voth

With A Candlelight Christmas just around the corner, we are excited to share a first look at our newly commissioned work, “Peace, My Soul,” which we are premiering this December—funded by our Ostinato Society. In this interview, composer Ellen Gilson Voth discusses the work and her process. You can also see the complete text for the composition at the very bottom.

Stay tuned for a more in-depth video interview with her and our very own Eugene Rogers later this month!

__________________________________

Q: Could you share a little bit about your process for selecting the text for “Peace, My Soul” and how you chose to set it to music? How did you discover Maya Angelou’s poem? We understand there’s a special connection to Washington DC…

Hearing Maya Angelou speak years ago at Ithaca College—with her magnetic delivery and presence—is firmly etched in my memory. In my search for poetry for this commission, I was so pleased to discover this poem of hers online, and to learn it was written for a White House tree lighting ceremony in 2005. Finding texts that speak to our present moment—and also speak beyond that moment, connecting past, present, and future—is a strong impetus for writing new music for me. All of that converges in her poem, "Amazing Peace."

Q: Something we love about your choral compositions is that you dedicate time to writing new Christmas and holiday songs, like “An Advent Carol,” “The Bells I Heard,” and now “Peace, My Soul.” How do you approach writing new Christmas music? The call of the “traditional” is so strong at the time of year, that “new” can feel a little daunting to audiences and singers alike.

I think balancing the familiar and the new is constantly on our mind as composers. And it is a balance for every composer, no matter where or when we live. For example, J.S. Bach chose established chorale melodies to anchor his cantatas, and Carl Orff chose accessible, folk-like melodies to balance the progressive writing within Carmina Burana. For this piece I decided to weave in phrases from the carol "In the bleak midwinter," anchoring the piece with a familiar melody and carol text that directly connects to Angelou's vivid poetry. All of us are searching, in our own way, for the new and the familiar at once; it's important to reflect that search back to audience members as they listen.

Q: Who are your compositional inspirations—and/or which composers do you connect with the most?

Hard to choose! We are all influenced—consciously or subconsciously—by composers we study and perform. As a conductor, I am always asking the "why" question when I study scores... “Why did _______ composer make this choice in this moment?” The deeper and more complex the work, the more questions to explore, and the less straightforward the answer.

Q: What inspired the use of horn for this work?

I've written several pieces for SATB, keyboard accompaniment (piano or organ) and another instrument. For me, it's like expanding your artist's palette to include a new color or shades of an existing color. The horn in this piece is meant to be reassuring and warm in the midst of the turbulence that Angelou describes (which is also captured at times in the piano accompaniment). 

Q: If you could tell our audiences one thing to listen for during “Peace, My Soul,” during A Candlelight Christmas this year, what would it be?

I’d tell them to follow the emotional arc of the piece, from reckoning with struggle to visions of hope and a better future. Oftentimes in holiday music, snow is presented as something light, atmospheric, desirable—but in Maya Angelou's poem, snow is heavy and oppressive. So the beginning has some dissonant chords to reflect that heaviness, but the piece eventually moves us toward brightness and the promise of peace, just as her poem does.

Q: What is your favorite holiday song or carol?

Too many to choose! I'm sure there will be one that TWC performs, and I'm looking forward to being at a performance at the Kennedy Center in person, to hear them all!

Peace, My Soul

Snow upon snow, falls upon snow -
The sky slips low, gray and low.
We ask ourselves, "What have we done?"

Then Christmas enters.

It is what we have hungered for.
We beckon this season to wait a while with us,
And make our way to higher ground.

Hope is born - again in the faces of children.
Hope is born - It rides on the shoulders of our aged as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth, brightening all things.
We shout with glorious tongues the coming,
The coming of hope.

All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of peace.

We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
We look at each other, then into ourselves.

Peace, my brother.
Peace, my sister.
Peace, my soul.

My soul.

— Text source: "Amazing Peace: A Christmas Poem" by Maya Angelou (1928-2014). Used with permission of Caged Bird Legacy, LLC.