Stagger - Solo Flute
Duration: 5-6 Minutes
Written: 2024
Premiered: October 11, 2024, 2024 Flute Artist Competition, Flute New Music Consortium, University of Nebraska-Omaha
Program Note:
"A friend once shared what she called the Parable of the Choir: A choir can sing a beautiful note impossibly long because singers can individually drop out to breathe as necessary and the note goes on. Social justice activism should be like that, she said. That's stuck with me."
-Paul Matisz, 2020
"Stagger" refers to the act of stagger breathing in choir, as described above. The piece was mostly sketched in lulls between choral rehearsals at First Presbyterian in Greenwich Village. My favorite way to stagger in choral singing is by annunciating an initial consonant, breathing during the vowel, and fading back in afterward:
I began staggering like this after realizing just how similar it was to splicing two performance takes together in an audio program; it is much easier to discreetly crossfade two recordings by lining them up at a percussive moment in the music.
The flutist begins "Stagger" trying to do everything themselves, embodying the contemporary activist who never gets a break. Shapeshifting and contorting through varied musical figures, they eventually burn themselves out. Through the incorporation of consonants in the middle section, the flutist discovers stagger breathing, leaving space for others to enter the fold. They also get a bit wiser! The command "Think what we're told we think," as well as the realization "We said what we heard others say" are splayed across several musical lines. These phrases are inspired by yet another parable concerning relationship and word: Octavia Butler's Parable of the Talents, specifically the opening parable of Chapter 18:
"Beware:
All too often,
We say
What we hear others say.
We think
What we’re told that we think.
We see
What we’re permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we’re told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see
Even an obvious lie
Again
And again and again
May be to say it,
Almost by reflex
Then to defend it
Because we’ve said it
And at last to embrace it
Because we’ve defended it
And because we cannot admit
That we’ve embraced and defended
An obvious lie.
Thus, without thought,
Without intent,
We make
Mere echoes
Of ourselves—
And we say
What we hear others say."
With this newfound wisdom the flutist tactfully closes the piece, building stagger breathing into the musical texture. Highlighting the individual's experience within the collective, "Stagger" invokes themes of speech, organizing, and cooperation, but also illusion, perception, and even deceit. Blending both musical and social sustenance into one, "Stagger" is a spell for our sustained futures, and all the humble cooperation to come.