soprano & chamber ensemble
fl, cl, S, pft, perc, vln, & vlc
The text of Carnal Node is comprised of e-mails that I received from a friend over the course of a year while he was living on a farm with his parents. These e-mails chronicled in startling fashion the plight of a young man dealing with readjustment to solitary farm life after having lived in San Francisco for two years as he suffered through the year-long process of gaining admission to law school. I edited portions of several of these e-mails to focus on the one facet of his ordeal which found him a man who was desperately trying to find love on the Internet as he bided his time in mateless rural Pennsylvania. Over the course of the piece, he e-mails a girl expressing his feelings to her, pines away waiting for her reply, laments at how he may live his life alone, and then finally meets the girl at a party only to be left emotionally naked and just as alone as when he started. The soprano fills the dual roles of narrator and protagonist: her narration is characterized by dry, stagnant, recitative-like lines which are accompanied by sounds of bongos designed to invoke the image of a typewriter or a computer keyboard. By contrast, the soprano as protagonist sings in a broad, melodic fashion which is characterized by wild oscillations in emotional content, ranging from skittish to overly dramatic.
Bill Holab Music