Description
Program Notes and Dedication
Border Songs is dedicated with great thanks to the commissioner Stacy Maugans, Eb Alto Saxophone and music faculty at Valparaiso University, Indiana. The creation of the composition is supported by South Shore Arts and a FY2024 Arts Project Support Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Duration: 12 min.
This arrangement of the chamber work is scored for soprano (or mezzo) and piano. The musical style of Border Songs is contemporary classical, with vernacular and world music influences. The texts describe crossing various borders –property borders, national borders, and the border between life and death — while seeking a better world. Border Songs text sources include: the Scotch-Irish American folk tune I am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger, excerpts from poems Mending Wall by Robert Frost (1914) and Ulysses by Lord Alfred Tennyson (1833), Jeremiah 8:15, an online survey and interviews with immigrants, articles about border issues, and original texts created by the composer depicting a prototype migrant journeying from South America to the U.S.
Marjorie M. Rusche
May 10, 2024
