Abyssopelagic: a very special journey
On Sunday, May 17th at 3pm the Oure Pleasure Singers will present the premiere performance of Abyssopelagic: A Choral Odyssey. This is a thrilling and moving multi-movement composition for chorus, piano, clarinet, tenor saxophone, and cello with words and music by Rhode Island composer and choral conductor, Nicholas Rocha. The piece is a secular De profundis ("Out of the depths I have cried unto Thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice."). It explores themes of journeying, memory, and love, as it seeks to emerge out of the darkness into the light and the air.
The singers have fallen in love with the haunting melodies of Abyssopelagic, and have been curious about the backstory behind the musical settings of the marvelous poetry. Recently a long-time member of OP Singers sat down with the composer/poet to gain insight into the work. That conversation, edited for brevity, follows: Q: First, the name: Abyssopelagic. Where does the word come from? Did the word itself inspire this composition? A: “Abyssopelagic” is taken from marine science, and describes the lowest layer of the ocean - the part that actually touches the ocean floor. I came across it when someone shared it as a vocabulary “word of the day”. And I immediately thought, “hey, that’s a pretty cool word!” I was drawn to the musicality of the word, its Greek origins, the fact that it evoked both the scientific and the sort of mythos of the ocean. I had a collection of amateur poetry I’d been growing as just a creative outlet and exercise. Some folks I’d shared a poem or two with started asking when I was going to set my own words to music. So I put all these things together: I took poems I thought would fit the theme, wrote a new one to focus on the word “abyssopelagic”, and started to think about how to put them together in a way that felt cohesive and meaningful. Q: Much of “contemporary” choral music features cluster chords, dissonance, and vague melodic lines. Abyssopelagic is emphatically not that. I hear elements of romanticism, jazz, Baroque, Broadway, gospel. What are your musical stylistic tastes and preferences, as expressed in this composition? A: I have a pretty diverse range of musical tastes. I considered this piece a kind of pastiche of all sorts of things that I personally enjoy. I didn’t set out to write something that I thought would necessarily be “correct” or “progressive enough” for contemporary academics and composers. I wrote the piece mainly for my own tastes. I’m in love with early music, especially the music of Hildegard, Josquin, Bach, and Handel. In my own way, I tried to take at least something of what I’ve learned from years of studying those composers’ works and apply that to the piece. I’ve always loved dramatic music, musical theatre - like Sondheim, Jason Robert Brown; opera - big Wagner fan, I must confess; the big cinematic choral music of someone like Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings) for instance; or the music of video game composers like Nobuo Uematsu and Yasunori Mitsuda; or a favorite piece of mine - Mahler’s 8th Symphony. I also love pop music: disco, funk, and Japanese City Pop. So you could say I like music that makes me want to move, either physically or emotionally. I wanted Abyssopelagic to be music that had mobility, qualities of modern lyricism and dance. Q: The poetry of Abyssopelagic has timeless elements, contemporary references, and explicit references to the Trojan War and the year 10,000! What ties all of this together? What’s the arc to the piece, the journey that you take us on? A: I wanted something that spanned space and time. A big aspect of this piece is love. Personal heartbreak had a lot to do with why this piece made sense to write at this point in my life. And love is the only thing capable of bridging and connecting people across space and time. But while the piece is about my own personal low point, I wanted it to be relatable to others, and not just be one big breakup album, so to speak. It had to extend from the personal outwards into the collective, and attempt to bring those together as well. Overall, the piece moves from the start downwards to a nadir in the fourth movement - the heaviest subject matter, the deepest sense of nihilism - and then works to pull itself upwards into the light over the course of the remaining four movements. I envisioned a dystopia: the people in that future opt ultimately to destroy each other in the name of what they believe “light” to be, rather than try to find understanding and the light within each other. But after the destruction of the world in that movement, we arrive at a new “New Jerusalem,” here envisioned in a secular, humanist way, a place where people live together in unity, where the swords are turned to plowshares, etc. The heaven we find there extends into the last two movements, where I tried to draw a connection between beatitude and the way we imprint our love into each other through memory - a literal chemical and neurological change within us that we live with for as long as we draw breath. The piece concludes with the affirmation that “heaven” is found somewhere in that truth. Q: Finally, what other arrangements and compositions have you created to date? And what about the future? A: I’ve been writing as an amateur since my junior and senior years of college. I started with small motets and chamber works that some of our on-campus ensembles could sing. Then when I graduated and started doing church music direction and organ playing, I started writing things for those choirs to sing - different psalm settings, Mass settings, and devotional songs for special feasts. The largest thing I’ve written previously is my O magnum mysterium, which I wrote for the Bristol County Chorus. Abyssopelagic is definitely my most ambitious project yet: eight movements long, featuring my own texts, and including instruments for which I’ve never written before. I’m excited to see it come together and actually be alive! And the future? I think it’d be cool to write something actually dramatic, like an opera. But that’s a bit of a reach, I think! |