In Another Place

Sept 2023. SATB and chamber orchestra / 9:30

Score PDF

Transcendence.

The poem “In Another Place” by contemporary poet Pattiann Rogers imagines a place where we could be fire, where we could be motion, or the design of an orbit against a starry background. The poem pulls back layers of being down to their very essence.

I sought to capture the possibility, cosmic wonder, and magic in Rogers’ writing. The final adagio ends peacefully, luxuriating in warmth.

This setting of In Another Place is suitable for a community, university, or professional choir.

“In Another Place” from Generations by Pattiann Rogers (New York, Penguin, 2004), copyright 2004 by Pattiann Rogers. Used by permission of the author. 

Sung here by the Rocky Mountain Chamber Choir - Virtual Singers.

For SATB and Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violins I + II, Viola, Cello, Contrabass, Piano

In Another Place

 

Outside the realm of breath and bone,

of vision with eyes, outside a sentient

vein of any kind, outside the tangible

or any of those ways we ordinarily tell

ourselves of presence, there may be a place

where one could be fire, for instance,

not a body lit by the light of fire,

not a body hearing the humming furnace

of fire or watching the orange, ash-

rimmed coals of fire fading, but a place

where one might be the fire itself,

if be is the right word for such a state,

if state has definition in such a realm.

Perhaps in this place one might,

if one wished, be merely motion—not

the wind or plains of grasses swathed

by wind, not a canyon wren in flight

passing a cliff edge, gliding straight out

over the echoing blue gorge below, not

the rise and hush of a river at the height

of spring, be none of these but the motion

alone of each, without weight or force,

without shadow, without domain.

One might exist (or some similar

word for being) not as soil or rock

or sea cave, not as any blossom

or animal blustering of the earth

but as its orbit, and not the path itself

but the equation the earth creates against

the starry background of its passages,

exist as the sublime math of the earth

in its revolution, not numbers

or symbols on paper, but the soaring

right of the math, that entity, if entity

is correct in these circumstances,

if circumstance exists in this place,

if place be a concept of equation.

Three horses stand together in the chill

autumn dusk. The lowered heads

of the bay and her sister are touching,

the silver fog of their breaths meeting.

The third, a pinto, stands perpendicular

to the others, faces the haunch of the bay.

Maybe in this place I could be the design

these horses make in relation to one another

against the sky, be the sort of beautiful

purity a design like that can make,

if that is what I am, if I am is anyone.