Full recording available on The Old Burying Ground: Kenneth Kiesler and the University of Michigan Symphony Orchestra on Dorian Sono Luminus
The Old Burying Ground (2007)
Program note:
I love walking in cemeteries. They are an ideal place to meditate upon how lives appear and disappear in this world. Encounters with gravestones are an opportunity to confront both the inevitability and the simple fact of death, and to grow in under-standing of one of the central truths of our lives: We die.
When I visited the cemetery in Jaffrey in 1998, I was floored by the power of the epitaphs. In order to read the stones one must sometimes lie flat on the graves. Stern exhortations about the brevity of our lives and tender statements of loss take on an urgent meaning when you encounter them face down on top of someone’s final resting place…
Since I couldn’t imagine residents of eighteenth-century New England rising from the grave and singing in an operatic style, I decided to slant the songs toward musical languages I’ve come to love: Irish traditional music, American folk song, Sacred Harp singing, and Albanian Polyphony, in addition to European classical music.
I had a teacher who insisted that to sing for someone didn't mean to sing while someone listened, but rather to sing for them, to take their place in song. It’s my hope we can do the same as listeners, and imagine ourselves standing for those whose who speak in these songs, since putting oneself in someone else's place is the essence of compassion.
Program note:
I love walking in cemeteries. They are an ideal place to meditate upon how lives appear and disappear in this world. Encounters with gravestones are an opportunity to confront both the inevitability and the simple fact of death, and to grow in under-standing of one of the central truths of our lives: We die.
When I visited the cemetery in Jaffrey in 1998, I was floored by the power of the epitaphs. In order to read the stones one must sometimes lie flat on the graves. Stern exhortations about the brevity of our lives and tender statements of loss take on an urgent meaning when you encounter them face down on top of someone’s final resting place…
Since I couldn’t imagine residents of eighteenth-century New England rising from the grave and singing in an operatic style, I decided to slant the songs toward musical languages I’ve come to love: Irish traditional music, American folk song, Sacred Harp singing, and Albanian Polyphony, in addition to European classical music.
I had a teacher who insisted that to sing for someone didn't mean to sing while someone listened, but rather to sing for them, to take their place in song. It’s my hope we can do the same as listeners, and imagine ourselves standing for those whose who speak in these songs, since putting oneself in someone else's place is the essence of compassion.