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- Sarah Kirkland Snider
Forward Into Light (2020)
- G Schirmer Inc (World)
Commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden, Music Director
- 2+pic.3(III:ca).3(II:Ebcl.III:bcl).3(III:cbn)/4.3.3.1/timp.2perc/pf(cel).hp/str
- 14 min
Programme Note
Composer note
Forward Into Light is a meditation on perseverance, bravery, and alliance. The piece was inspired by the American women suffragists — Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Frances E.W. Harper, Ida B. Wells, Zitkála-Šá, and Mabel Lee Ping-Hua, to name but a few — who devoted their lives to the belief that women were human beings and therefore entitled to equal rights and protections under the law of the United States of America.
I wrote the music thinking about what it means to believe in something so deeply that one is willing to endure harassment, isolation, assault, incarceration, hunger, force-feedings, death threats, and life endangerment to fight for it. The music reflects what I imagine a suffragist’s internal psychological landscape might have resembled: a struggle along the emotional continuum between hope and doubt, inspiration and exhaustion, faithlessness and resilience.
The piece was also inspired by the idea of synergistic interpersonal partnerships, which lay at the heart of the American women’s suffrage movement. Forward Into Light opens with three motivic ideas: a pair of ascending sixth intervals in the violins, an undulating quintuplet figure in the harp, and a lyrical line in close canon led by the violas. The trio of ideas coax each other forward, tentatively at first, and then more urgently, as tremors of adversity intensify the stakes. New voices join the conversation, challenging and subverting the original ideas to explore new collaborative solutions, united in the search for a strength that only a defined, mutual purpose can yield.
The piece was also inspired by the idea of synergistic interpersonal partnerships, which lay at the heart of the American women’s suffrage movement. Forward Into Light opens with three motivic ideas: a pair of ascending sixth intervals in the violins, an undulating quintuplet figure in the harp, and a lyrical line in close canon led by the violas. The trio of ideas coax each other forward, tentatively at first, and then more urgently, as tremors of adversity intensify the stakes. New voices join the conversation, challenging and subverting the original ideas to explore new collaborative solutions, united in the search for a strength that only a defined, mutual purpose can yield.
Forward Into Light features a musical quote from “March of the Women,” composed in 1910 by British composer and suffragette Dame Ethel Smyth. The anthem of the women’s suffrage movement, “March of the Women” was sung in homes and halls, on streets and farms, and on the steps of the United States Capitol. The title of the piece derives from a suffrage slogan made famous by the banner that suffragist Inez Milholland carried while riding a white horse to lead the National American Woman Suffrage Association parade on March 3, 1913, in Washington, D.C.:
Forward, out of error
Leave behind the night
Forward through the darkness
Forward into light!
— Sarah Kirkland Snider
Scores
Features
- Independent Repertoire: American History and Politics
- The rich, complex, and often tumultuous history of American politics has been a key concern for many American composers. Their political engagement ranges from earnest celebration of national triumph to sobering investigations of the painful past. These works help us better understand our current realities through the sounds of our history.
- Resistance and Dissent
- Poetry and music have long been wielded as powerful tools for protest and dissent. Here, we explore a selection of pieces representing resistance to political and systemic oppression.
Reviews
Commissioned by the orchestra as part of its “Project 19” focus on female composers, “Forward Into Light” was inspired by the suffragists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. With music that was by turns fragile and ferocious — and that also boasted touches of mordant wit — “Light” ably communicated its story about new ideas struggling for space (and for longevity). Spare, ascending motives in the harp anchored some early sections. When the orchestra responded and added in new, consonant melody in turn, there was a sense of material developing through collaboration. Elsewhere, a brief song for clarinet spurred material for other winds. Subsequent interplay, with Minimalist pulses in the violins offset by glissandi in the cellos and basses, recalled the swooning call-and-response arrangements of past Snider works, like “Circe and the Hanged Man,” from her 2010 song cycle “Penelope.”
The typically hard-charging Philharmonic music director Jaap van Zweden allowed these moments to breathe. Yet he also relished hairpin turns during which the music throttled into tutti writing. Late in the piece, he managed Snider’s quick dynamic shifts with a Hollywood sound-mixer’s feel for drama.
Overall, “Forward” was packed but not overstuffed with historical references, both abstract and concrete. Sometimes Snider’s Sturm und Drang suggested early feminist boldness, or corresponding public sphere controversy.
More Info
- The Summertime Sounds of Sarah Kirkland Snider
- 12th July 2024
- The music of Sarah Kirkland Snider returns to the Tanglewood and Aspen Music Festivals in 2024.
