Illuminate (2020)

[2222.222.timp+2 perc.harp.SOLO soprano, SOLO soprano, SOLO mezzo-soprano.strings]
Duration: 30’

Commissioned by the California Symphony

Premiered March 26, 2022 at Lesher Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA
Alexandra Smither and Molly Netter, sopranos, Kelly Guerra, mezzo-soprano, and the California Symphony; Donato Cabrera, conductor

View the score

“A libretto that depicts many shades of femininity,” writes Katherine Balch of her new song cycle Illuminate, “or at least, resonates with my own associations and experiences of this term/idea.” Balch has assembled texts from four of her favorite female poets— Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, Alejandra Pizarnik, and Sappho via Anne Carson’s translations, interweaving them with lines from a fifth, seemingly-improbable, source: Arthur Rimbaud’s Les Illuminations. “One of the reasons Rimbaud’s poetry resonates with me is that there are always these seemingly offhanded but critical references to the perspectives of women and children throughout his work,” says Balch. “It’s almost as if he is describing the world through their lens.”

Think of Illuminate as a celebration of friendship, an expression of joy in the unique perspectives of the poets as well as the performers. But don’t expect a straightforward setting of the texts; rather, the lines are broken apart, or sung in special ways, stretched out, or combined in various ways within a lavish orchestral texture that includes a varied array of percussion instruments played with an equally varied array of techniques. (Even the vocalists get involved.) Over the course of five movements, Illuminate explores its themes via a framework of the cycle of the seasons, beginning and ending with the spring.

Thus Illuminate opens with growth and abundance (“O sweetness / when her lute sings”), spring in all its sweet promise, lutes and lyres and bell towers, drums and dancing. The summer that follows (“I embrace the summer dawn / I recall the wind”) conjures up heat and mugginess, but also abundant beauty—flowers, pastures, birds, and angels—capped with an orchestral interlude depicting a torrential summer storm.

Autumn wetness and waning light (“In a puddle”) prepare for the isolation of winter, when all seems frozen but life nonetheless slumbers within (“Quand le monde / I’m not sure how old I was”). This is the time of coming of age, for the unbearable awkwardness of puberty. “Trying to talk to the other kids / Through the agency of the monster I shuffled / Around as” writes Sharon Olds. But all things change, and winter gives way once again to spring (“O sweetness / a wild patience”), to sweetness, to continuation, to Adrienne Rich’s “sounds and visions.”

“I hope the piece will be heard as a joyful outpouring,” writes Balch, “because that’s what I feel when I think about these texts, the women they represent to me, and the women who will be singing them.”

— Scott Foglesong

Review:

San Francisco Chronicle: Review: After a two year wait, composer unveils a masterpiece

Previews:

San Francisco Classical Voice: Preview: Katherine Balch's 'Illuminate' Premieres with the California Symphony

California Symphony Blog: Balch on "Illuminate," A Song Cycle for Three Voices and Orchestra