Deepest Shade

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Notes

Deepest Shade is for SATB chorus, a cappella or with background support from organ or other sustained instruments.

This is a very personal piece of music. The text came to me as I contemplated my father’s increasing dementia. The repeated words in different forms, the incomplete phrases that are still full of resonances and internal meaning, signify to me the loss of communication, the loss of understanding and companionship, but not the loss of love. Dementia is a death that doesn’t end, cannot heal and that wrenches my soul. I needed to put these thoughts into music to make them bearable.

Read the Text by the composer.

Listen

Listen to a computer-generated version of Deepest Shade, without words.

Audio note: The audio demonstrates harmonies and rhythms, but not interpretation of vocal texture. The voice sounds in my virtual sounds library are too punchy to convey the serene, otherworldly quality of an actual performance. I mixed the vocal sounds with instrumental doubling for a more pleasing texture, but the piece is meant to be unaccompanied.