We have been fortunate enough to collaborate with a living composer for this tour. Sean Doyle has been gracious enough to lend his talents to help us complete our program with an original piece. You can read more about Sean on our Collaboration Corner. Below, are program notes from Sean regarding this piece.
"When Dan Abraham and I first discussed the possibility of a work for the AU Chamber Singers to be premiered on their international tour to Greece, he was interested in completing a programmed set of pieces around the theme of “water”. Immediately my mind went to philosophy, ancient observations on the elements and fundamentals of things – Aristotle. Flipping through pages of the Metaphysics, I stumbled on observations he cites from another philosopher, Thales of Miletus, who claimed that water is the origin, or principle, of all things – what Aristotle called ‘arche’. These axioms seemed simultaneously so ancient, cold, objective–and yet curiously moving to me. Having grown up in an oceanside community where the permanence of the water and its impact on our lives was a constant foundational feature, it occurred to me that the appeal of this text was not its content in and of itself, but the dialogue created between its meaning and my contemporary reconciliation of it. To engage this, I asked my brother, NY-based poet Corydon Doyle, to compose a text that “puzzle-pieces” into the lines from Aristotle; a contemporary, first-person perspective of someone standing on shore’s edge, contemplating the fleeting reality of existence against the unrelenting permanence of the tides. Musically, this dialogue manifests in two ways: first, the voices are split into two groups, a solo quartet singing the words from Aristotle; the remaining singers of the choir sing the contemporary text. Initially, the texts are presented separately, in two unique, non-overlapping sound worlds, but slowly (as the present-day narrator comes to terms with how “this endless tide will rise and fall / regardless of us here at all”) the two ensembles being to overlap, intertwining their material until they sing simultaneously at the climax of the work. This is followed by a brief coda, which separates them back to their original roles – the contemporary voice resolved to perhaps a deeper understanding of themselves, as the quartet returns to their opening lines–indeed, the opening line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics– “All men by nature desire to know”. Arche is written for and dedicated to my colleague and good friend Daniel Abraham and the American University Chamber Singers, to whom I’m eternally grateful for their diligence and artistry in bringing this new, challenging work to life."
One of our singers was particularly moved by the piece, and this is what she had to say,“I’m truly excited to premiere Sean Doyle’s piece “Arche” and to take it on tour. The notes and words work so well together, and it’s a really beautiful piece, but it’s also incredibly special in that it’s one of the four or five pieces I’ve sang throughout my life that has moved me to tears. You can tell how much work he put into making it both enjoyable and emotional to hear and sing." -M. Harris
