Residency Reflections
By Jack Schabert
A few years ago, preparing for a tour with my college’s orchestra, we were told we’d be premiering a new piece of music, and it was handed out. The front page read “Symphony No. 1: The Singing Wilderness”. Reading the further notes inside, I learned about Sigurd Olson, and a bit about the book the music was about. I had never heard of Sigurd or his books, but I had spent many weeks of my life outdoors in the north woods, and Sigurd’s short introduction was enough for me to understand a little of the story behind the sounds. There’s all sorts of nature-inspired music out there, but when the orchestra began to play, I was taken away to my past experiences in the bush and my adventures in the forests and waters of the north country. Matthew Peterson, the composer, and Sigurd Olson behind him, seemed to have an innate understanding of the pace and flow of the out-of-doors that I hadn’t heard before in music or in written word. I missed several entrances because I was lost in thought, remembering sounds and places from long ago, far from buildings, other people, and musical instruments. When I got home later I ordered a copy of the book. It never entered my mind that in a few short years I might be sleeping in Sigurd’s own bedroom, visiting his cabin, and trying to write music of my own for his stories.
Sigurd begins his first book describing the singing of the wilderness, and how, if one spends enough time in the wild, they can eventually begin to hear it. Our natural world has long been associated with music in our stories, from the various mythologies from around the world, to works of literature like the Odyssey, the Iliad, and later the Kalevala, and later yet Tolkien’s myth of the world being sung into existence. Reading Sigurd Olson for the first time, I watched as he intimately tied it all together, telling us of his adventures, and revealing his thought that the wilds are still singing, and how he still hears it, getting around on just his own two feet and a paddle. This musical seed that Sigurd planted in my mind from the first few pages stuck there, and being behind all his writing, I frequently heard music and sounds in the places and events he described. So began the project of setting his second book, Listening Point, to music.
My vision, which is still in progress, was to compose an instrumental piece for each chapter of the book, with all twenty-eight pieces building a large-scale work that would reflect the story and images of Sigurd’s book. Any thought that I would finish this project during a week’s stay was absurd, but I didn’t want to shrink the scope of my project, so from the outset I assumed that this would take the better part of at least a year or more. During my time as Artist-in-Residence, I wrote sketches for nineteen of the chapters. I had never written so much new material in such a short time – I tried my best not to begin orchestrating or developing the ideas, but to stay as zoomed out as possible, and create new ideas and sketches for each piece. It was exhausting. I had never forced myself to come up with so much new material at once. Some chapters seemed to write themselves. I would sit in Sigurd’s living room, looking out the large windows over his garden, read a chapter, sit down at the piano, and it would just happen. Falling Leaf, The Sound of Rain, Wilderness Beach, and Young Ottertail all came about like this. Other chapters needed to bake for a while. I think I read Fleur-de-lis four times before I came up with what became the final sketch. I loved being in Ely while writing – when I couldn’t get past a chapter or quite figure it out, I would visit Listening Point, or go walk in the woods behind the neighborhood. Oftentimes I’d come back from a walk and the piece would happen immediately after. Cradle-Knolls came to me in the middle of a walk on the fourth or fifth day.
I never wrote at Listening Point. I didn’t dare bring my work with me there – it was a solemn place, and nothing should touch it or disturb the peace there except soft voices and thoughts. I would often go there after writing all day, before the sun went down, and sit out on the rock and listen to the water. One evening after sunset I went back inside the cabin to grab my jacket, and I fell asleep in Sigurd’s rocking chair. Upon returning home after the residency, I sorted out my mess of notebooks and papers and got the music engraved. I performed most of it with my trio the next Friday night in downtown Saint Paul. We performed sixteen or so of the chapters, which totaled about an hour and forty minutes of music. I am now (gradually) working on filling in the gaps in the story from a musical adaptation standpoint, and will soon begin orchestrating some of the chapters for a larger orchestra. The final goal is to record all the music, which will be rather expensive and likely not for a while. Stay tuned with the Listening Point Foundation to hear recordings and stay in touch with the project.
