First Words
for mixed chorus
(2018)
- Duration 5'
- Written for New York Virtuoso Singers
- Premiere October 27, 2018; New York Virtuoso Singers, conducted by Harold Rosenbaum
Program Notes
I composed this work while expecting our first child. When this reality started to settle in, anxieties and fantasies began to take hold, and I wondered about the first sounds and words she would eventually produce.
In the confusing soup of pre-language, from the babbling of cries to discrete syllables, we somehow find ways to utter our most basic needs and expressions. These sounds, of which we later have no recollection, are often the first and most intimate ones our parents treasure of our infanthood, the way we first communicate with them, and a key to our earliest emotional contact. The use of toy instruments gives an added unrestrained way of conveying noise and pure rhythm that amplifies, excites and surprises, and can be mimetic or simply affective.
– Wang Lu
