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As the country paused on September 11 to commemorate the anniversary of the tragedy, USM's observance included an original piece by our composer-in-residence J. Mark Scearce, who joined the USM faculty last year just days before the attacks.
Playing his piece "Memoria'' on the anniversary was emotionally demanding, Scearce said, but he added, ''it was good for the sense of communion and fellowship it provided.''
''Memoria,''commissioned by USM French horn master John Boden and performed with
him, was the first of three pieces Scearce has written on
this theme. A second piece on the subject, ''Be Anxious for
Nothing,'' commissioned by Robert Russell for the Choral Arts
Society (CAS), was premiered by CAS at a 9/11 commemoration
at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. on Sunday, September
15. It will be performed locally on Sunday, October 6.
A third piece, based on a poem by Toni Morrison, will be
performed next April by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra, for
whom he will be writing one work each season during 2002-2004.
Like other Americans who suffered no personal loss, Scearce
struggled to find an appropriate response to the tragedy.
And like all artists, he has tried to give his response a
universality that will help others. For three months after
the tragedy, Scearce couldn't find his response. ''I know music
can assuage grief, but I felt powerless to help when I compared
what I did to what the firemen and rescue crews could do,''
he recalls. To write on this subject, he had to feel an intensity
of empathy that enables him to speak for others. ''If I were
an actor,'' he says, ''I'd have to be a method actor.'' In December,
''it came out in a flood.''
His second piece draws on Scearce's favorite biblical passage:
''Be anxious for nothing... And the peace of God, which passeth
all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through
Christ Jesus.'' It is, he says, ''a prayer for us now.''
A month after the tragedy, he read in Vanity Fair Toni Morrison's
poem, ''The Dead of September 11,'' which he found compassionate
and balanced, and he immediately wrote asking for permission
to set it to music. ''This Thread,'' is based on Morrison's
line in the poem, ''this thread thrown between your humanity
and mine....'' The piece ends with the tolling of bells ''in
four sets of five chimes on the same pitch as the fire bells
of old'' he says.
Scearce is the composer of sixty instrumental works and over
a hundred text settings. A graduate of Indiana University,
his work has been published and recorded by Delos, Capstone,
and Warner Bros, and been performed in Europe, Asia, New Zealand,
and across North America. His music has won four national
competitions, and he is the recipient of a number of honors
and awards, including ones from the National Association of
Composers, the National Conference of the Society of Composers,
Inc. and the American Music Center.
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