Spiritual Medley No. 2, for tuba-euphonium quartet
Instrumentation: tuba euphonium quartet (euphonium 1-2, tuba 1-2)
Year Composed: 2020
Includes “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” and “Steal Away”
Originally by “traditional”
Premiered August 2020 (virtual) by Black All-Star Tuba Euphonium Quartet. Premiered February 2022 (live) by Peabody Tuba-Euphonium Quartet.
Program Notes:
Spiritual Arrangement 2, written in summer 2020, incorporates three of my favorite spirituals: “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” and “Steal Away.” Spirituals are songs created by African American slaves and passed down by rote. “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me” tells the story of the speaker crying out for the support of the Lord during difficult times. This arrangement opens up with a solo voice playing the melody over drones. As the melody continues, the accompaniment gets more active and supportive until all the voices end playing in octaves, symbolizing a level of camaraderie. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” is about the sorrow in being away from your home—the way the African American slaves were taken from their motherlands and often brought away from family through the American slave trade. This arrangement utilizes dissonance to convey the turmoil and the weight of the sadness. It ends with the tuba-euphonium pairs repeating the line “a long way from home.” The first uses extreme octaves between both instruments to present the distance between the speaker and their home, and the second uses closer octaves, ending on a unison, to present that there is no hope for a return home and they must accept where they are. “Steal Away” has an entirely different character from the first two songs. This song presents a story of the speaker “stealing away” to Jesus. While the story sounds as if it is more positive, finding “Jesus” and “home” can be viewed as symbolizing death. This arrangement captures the seemingly lighter character by using a blues style, but it ends by slowing down and fading to silence.