Underneath My Feet

Once in a while, usually when I’m overdue for a trip to the grocery store, it dawns on me that there is literally food all over the ground. Like, just growing, for free. Amazing. And those are the times I’m reminded of that gap between our modern world and the natural world, and how healing it can be to take part in nature’s incredible abundance. All we need comes from the earth underneath our feet.

With this in mind, I constructed a text that paints ourselves as runaways seeking refuge from manufactured chaos. In the retreat to nature is the realization that the earth contains the wealth and power we chase and the safety we pursue, as well as the equivalents of our modern household conveniences. By the final verse, there is clarity that the earth provides not only for our physical needs, but also for our emotional and spiritual ones too: “wind will carry my apology and the storm clouds mourn with me while the forest fire clears away all my lingering debris.” I can pinpoint a particular moment in my own life where I hiked to a viewpoint, felt the wind and smelled the pines, watched a circling hawk, and only then could I feel a healing peace clearing away my own lingering debris.

Setting Underneath My Feet in a classic strophic folk song structure was my way of
musically getting back to basics. Verses and choruses are as elemental to vocal music as water and rock to a canyon. The gulf between the natural and modern worlds is further illustrated by the wide gaps in the folky melody. The harmonic material is all based on stacked fourths and fifths, which was my way of nodding to the four elements. The four elements are also reflected in the four voice types (SATB) as well as in the four groups of musicians that collaborate to make the piece a cohesive whole: voices, piano, marimba, and conductor. And, quite literally, I recycled melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic moments throughout the piece over and over again, as a reminder both of the need for respecting our resources as well as recognizing the repeating patterns in nature.

I still make regular trips to the grocery store, because after all, homemade potato chips are pretty difficult to get right. But, the knowledge that everything I need (including potato chips) is already provided by the earth is a source of peace. The gratitude I have for nature’s abundance is the basis for my constant efforts to be a good steward of the earth, and in writing this piece I hope that all my fellow earth-dwellers feel that same sense of pride, peace, and responsibility for continued care.

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Commissioned by the Choral Arts Ensemble of Rochester, Minnesota, Rick Kvam, Artistic Director