Other notes - Ruehr

My daughter Sophie Ruehr, who is a climate scientist, introduced me to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and the book had a profound impact on me. I have written many works relating to the complex relationship that humans have with the natural world, and Kimmerer’s work spoke to me in one of the most honest and positive ways I have ever experienced. It seemed important to me to put her philosophy into a musical context. The result is a coalescence of the main points of Braiding Sweetgrass as I saw them, compiled into 5 main sections as follows: Opening Prayer, Grief, Gifts, Solutions, Renewal. The Opening Prayer text is taken from the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation. The question of cultural appropriation is one that both Kimmerer and I are sensitive about, but it seemed important to me to include this wonderful way of acknowledging the Earth that confirms Kimmerer’s own research and personal experience. Grief and Gifts form an arc that ends with a positive moment. Then we start again with a very Bach inspired oboe obligato that leads to Solutions. The final Renewal is really a kind of populist anthem, specifically directed at the congregation of Emmanuel Church in Boston where the work will be premiered. The idea of a somewhat didactic text reminds me of certain Baroque cantatas that Emmanuel Music often performs during services, and I was aware of that tradition as I was composing. The title of the entire work, Songs of the Earth, is a nod towards Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, borrowing some aspects of Mahler’s soundscape but interpreted with a contemporary understanding, which has a very different view of the natural world as compared to that of the early 20th century.

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