What You’ll Hear at Wei Phi | Jennifer Higdon (1962)

blue cathedral

Background

Jennifer Higdon is among America’s most successful contemporary composers. Born in Brooklyn, she studied flute at Bowling Green State University and composition at both the University of Pennsylvania and at the Curtis Institute, where she taught until 2021. In 2010, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto, one of many honors she has garnered in the past twenty years. In just the last few years, her first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016—the first American opera to do so in the award’s history. Within the past few years, Higdon has had successful premieres of her Double Percussion Concerto with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the Cold Mountain Suite with the Delaware Symphony, and The Absence, Remember, a choral work commissioned by several choruses. She is among America’s most frequently-programmed composers, and her blue cathedral is among the most often-played pieces of contemporary music, receiving over 700 performances since its premiere in 2000. A lyrical and deeply spiritual work, it is a tribute to her brother, who died of cancer a year before she composed it. She provides the following note:

“Blue—like the sky. Where all possibilities soar. Cathedrals—a place of thought, growth, spiritual expression, serving as a symbolic doorway into and out of this world. Blue represents all potential and the progression of journeys. Cathedrals represent a place of beginnings, endings, solitude, fellowship, contemplation, knowledge and growth. As I was writing this piece, I found myself imagining a journey through a glass cathedral in the sky. Because the walls would be transparent, I saw the image of clouds and blueness permeating from the outside of this church. In my mind’s eye the listener would enter from the back of the sanctuary, floating along the corridor amongst giant crystal pillars, moving in a contemplative stance. The stained glass windows’ figures would start moving with song, singing a heavenly music. The listener would float down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising toward an immense ceiling which would open to the sky. As this journey progressed, the speed of the traveler would increase, rushing forward and upward. I wanted to create the sensation of contemplation and quiet peace at the beginning, moving toward the feeling of celebration and ecstatic expansion of the soul, all the while singing along with that heavenly music.

“Those were my thoughts when the Curtis Institute of Music commissioned me to write a piece for its seventy-fifth anniversary. Curtis is a house of knowledge—a place to reach for that beautiful expression of the soul which comes through music. I began writing this piece at a unique juncture in my life and found myself pondering the question of what makes a life. The recent loss of my brother, Andrew Blue, made me reflect on the amazing journeys we all make in our lives, crossing paths with so many individuals singularly and collectively, learning and growing each step of the way. This piece represents the expression of the individual and the group—our inner travels and the places our souls carry us, the lessons we learn, and the growth we experience. In tribute to my brother, I feature solos for the clarinet (the instrument he played) and the flute (the instrument I play). Because I am the older sibling, it is the flute that appears first in this dialogue. At the end of the work, the two instruments continue their dialogue, but it is the flute that drops out and the clarinet that continues on in the upward progressing journey.

“This is a story that commemorates living and passing through places of knowledge and of sharing and of that song called life.”

Jennifer Higdon on blue cathedral

What You’ll HEar

The conversation between flute and clarinet acts as both prologue and epilogue to blue cathedral. The very beginning, however, is hushed string chords and chimes—33 in all, to represent her brother’s age at the time of his death. The first big moment of contrast for high strings is intense without ever being strident. A quiet middle section for solo woodwinds and strings leads to more sweeping and exciting music for brass. This gives way to music of hushed exaltation and a return of the flute and clarinet dialogue. In the end, as the music quietly fades away, Higdon includes a wonderful effect: players from the orchestra gradually take up small bells, and at the very end several players play tuned crystal goblets.