Erica Muhl.com

What is the sound of an angel’s voice…

What is the Sound of an Angel's Voice... is an homage to three authors, Annie Dillard, Maya Angelou and Alice Walker, whose works have inspired me and so many others over the years. The score is divided into three sections, each a portrait of one of the authors. Each section is accompanied by an excerpt from the author's work, given in the score and below in the order which governs the musical construction. These portraits are intended to be free musical expressions of both the writing and the writer. The excerpts were chosen by me as representative of the unique gifts of each author, and as part of an overall message which I wish to convey – a message expressed so much more beautifully by these women than I could have ever dreamed. Ideas of uncertainty, upheaval, and hope course through the music, much as they do in the excerpts, and thus serve as dramatic pinions for the work.

Written at the time of the 1993 Los Angeles riots, the score carries the following dedication:

To Annie Dillard, Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker
and The City of Los Angeles

The dedication to the city and the title, What is the sound of an angel’s voice…, reflect my own thought process during this very difficult time. It is, I think, understood that our true nature as human beings comes out most readily during times of crisis, for it is then that we either rise to the occasion or sink to our lowest common denominator. Los Angeles is a multi-cultural, multi-faceted city which I see as one of this country's many proving grounds -- test cases, if you will -- for our survival as a unified society, the key to which, I believe, is an embracing of difference. That being said, with the many fundamental cultural or religious differences that separate us, the concept of angels, i.e., benevolent beings that step in and avert tragedy or spur us on to greatness, seems to be virtually universally accepted. Or, at least, universally inoffensive. It occurs to me, if there are angels, where, when, and how do they work? Are they, in fact, these ethereal beings that whisper to us to be better, to take the right path? Or can they, perhaps, exist on a much more ordinary plane… as the best friend, the artist that makes us think, or the poet that makes us cry?

Musically, the work is based on a single melodic fragment, heard in the violins in the first few moments of the piece. This melody undergoes constant transformation through the three sections; initially plaintive and questioning, it builds restlessly to a powerful intensity before it is lifted into stillness and reassurance.

What is the Sound of an Angel's Voice... was commissioned by the Whitaker Fund and the Women's Philharmonic, Joann Faletta, conductor. The work was premiered in 1994 in San Francisco, and was nominated by that organization for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in Music.
E.M.

I. Annie Dillard

It is difficult to undo our own damage, and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. The very holy mountains are keeping mum. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it; we are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind use to cry, and hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of earth, and living things say very little to very few. Birds may crank out sweet gibberish and monkeys howl; horses neigh and pigs say, as you recall, oink oink. But so do cobbles rumble when a wave recedes, and thunders break the air in lightning storms. I call these noises silence. It could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water — and wherever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song and dance, the show we drove from town. At any rate, now it is all we can do, and among our best efforts, to try to teach a given human language, English, to chimpanzees.

In the forties an American psychologist and his wife tried to teach a chimp actually to speak. At the end of three years the creature could pronounce, in a hoarse whisper, the words "mama," "papa," and "cup." After another three years of training she could whisper, with difficulty, still only "mama," "papa," and "cup." The more recent successes at teaching chimpanzees American Sign Language are well known. Just the other day a chimp told us, if we can believe that we truly share a vocabulary, that she had been sad in the morning. I'm sorry we asked.

What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

"Teaching a Stone to Talk" (excerpt)
from Teaching a Stone to Talk; expeditions and encounters
Copyright 1982 by Annie Dillard. Reprinted by permission of Russell & Volkening.

II. Maya Angelou

Oaks, massive with the memory of Lynch
Perversions, bend to grip my knees and rustle
A moan for our burned visions
The trees may weep. I must stiffen my back
Quieten my face and teach a lesson in Grace.

from "Now Sheba Sings the Song"
Copyright © 1987 by Maya Angelou. Used by permission
of Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of
Penguin Books USA, Inc.

III. Alice Walker

Rest in peace.
The meaning of your lives
is still
unfolding.

Rest in peace.
In me
the meaning of your lives
is still
unfolding.
Rest in peace, in me.
The meaning of your lives
is still
unfolding.

Rest. In me
the meaning of your lives
is still
unfolding.

Rest. In peace
in me
the meaning
of our lives
is still
unfolding.

Rest.