REFLECT REFLECT RESPOND RESPOND (2012)

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PROGRAM NOTE
“Reflect Reflect Respond Respond (Echo and Narcissus in Reverse)” is a dream-like meditation on the ancient story of a disembodied,
mimicking voice of Echo, a once-songful nymph who, at the punishing hands of jealous Juno, is slashed from her body and made into pure sound,
but a sound that is able only to repeat what it hears; and the evacuated watery image of Narcissus, a youth who falls in love with his own reflection
in the pond that, due to his inability to pull away the beautiful image of his own face, eventually becomes his watery grave.
Rather than attempt to retell the story of these doomed individuals, or provide a new interpretation, this music takes as inspiration the simulacra of
the boy’s image and the girl’s voice, and doubles and mirrors its own musical content throughout its duration with both electronic delay lines
(facilitated by a computer) and a musical form comprised of overlapping, water-like patterns. The “reversal” that the title implies is this music’s
journey from a simulacrum to a possible reality. Perhaps, within the transformations of these two characters from living bodies into pure vibrations
(vibrations of voice and vibrations of light), a truer version of selfhood becomes actualized.
To make the story more my own, I imagined the sad song I myself might sing if I were a bodiless Echo mourning a drowned Narcissus on the
shore: J.S. Bach’s haunting chorale setting of “Jesu, meine Freude,” a song not my own, but that which I have heard so many times that I feel it
has become, in many untellable ways, part of my own voice.

TEXT (by the composer)
Echo,
Who will sing my sad songs?
I will sing your sad songs
“Jesu meine freude”
“Meines Herzens Weide”
“Jesu meine freude”
I will follow you
I will come to you
I will love you
This is my sad song
I stand here and sing
Jesus stands by me
I stand here and sing
If I may not touch you
Let me gaze
Let me gaze upon you
Let me gaze…
“Jesu meine Freude”
“Ach wie Lang, ach lange”
“Jesu meine Freude”

Echo
Echo, ecquis adest? [Echo, are you there?]
Adest! [I am here!]
Nacrissus, veni, veni [Narcissus, come, come]
Echo, huc coeamus [Echo, let us meet]
Huc coeamus [let us meet]
Echo, adest, adest [Echo, I am here, I am here]
Quid faciam? [What shall I do?]
Iste ego sum [I am him]
Uror amore mei [I burn with love of my own self]
Lacrimas [tears]
Me lacrimante tuas [as I weep myself]
Lacrimas [tears]
Me lacrimante tuas [as I weep myself]
Quid faciam? [What shall I do?]
Lacrimas [tears]
Lacrimate [tears]
Moriemur in una [(we will) die in a single breath]
Moriemur in una [(we will) die in a single breath]
Sonus est [she is sound]
Sonus est [she is sound]
Vale, vale [farewell, farewell]
Vale, vale [farewell, farewell]
Vox manet [(only) her voice remains].

PERFORMANCE HISTORY
Premiered by Wild Rumpus June 8, 2012, at ODC Dance Commons, San Francisco.
Performers: Amy Sedan, flute; Sophie Huet, clarinet; Naomi Hoffmeyer, harp; Margaret Halbig, piano; Dan VanHassel, electric guitar; Christy Kyong, violin; Anne Suda, violoncello; Maria Janus & Kali Wilson, sopranos; Nathaniel Berman, conductor.