Squeezing In Brief ‘Rest’

As conductor-in-residence at the Pacific Symphony from 1991 to ‘97, Frank Ticheli wrote five pieces--short and long--for the Santa Ana-based orchestra.

But, for various reasons, he never wrote for its regular choral collaborator--John Alexander’s Pacific Chorale.

Even when Alexander called Ticheli last May to commission a work, it looked like it might not happen.

“Initially, I had to decline it,” Ticheli said in a recent interview from his Pasadena home. “He wanted it for [this] May. I had commissions backed up to 2003”--the latest being a memorial to the victims of last month’s shooting in Littleton, Colo. “I told him I’d have difficulty to squeeze it in that quickly.”

Alexander countered by suggesting a five-minute a cappella piece.

Ticheli responded: “ ‘Can we just sort of leave it open? If I get something finished, great. If not, can we try for the year following?’ So we went that way.”

In the end, Ticheli wrote “There Will Be Rest,” a setting to music of the poem by Sara Teasdale, which Alexander will conduct in its world premiere Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

Even before he had found the time, about three weeks earlier this year, to compose it, Ticheli was seeking suitable poems.

“It’s always a huge process,” he said. “I read [Walt Whitman’s] entire ‘Leaves of Grass’ again. I read the poems of Michelangelo. I read the poems of Christina Rossetti and Dante Rossetti. I read, of course, all of Emily Dickinson.

“I went through many more poems than that. I bought huge anthologies. I hate to be sitting in a library and trying to decide there.

“That’s one of the nice things about being a composer. We are forced to become familiar with great poetry, forced to fall in love with great poetry. I don’t know if by nature I’d have the patience it takes to read so much great poetry so slowly and so carefully otherwise. As a composer, you have to do it.”

Teasdale’s work intrigued him.

“In general, her poetry tends to be melancholic,” Ticheli said. “But I noticed that every time she talks about stars, there tends to be this hint of hope. I narrowed it down to about eight of her poems that addressed stars in some way. All were similar in the way they seem to draw inspiration . . . from the stars.”

From eight, he went to two, and started working on both, “seeing which one would take hold.”

“I had to start writing,” he said. “I couldn’t make the decision until I started composing. The music made the decision for me.”

Ticheli also set the other poem to music and plans to return to his list for a song cycle based on Teasdale’s works.

Though the new piece is short--about five minutes--”every note is sweated over, carefully thought about and worked over, thought and rethought and reconsidered,” he said.

“It’s difficult to do. You can lose sight of the forest by focusing on the trees. So you have to keep going over the forest, the big picture. It was really challenging.”

Which came first--a melody or the harmony?

“Both. It’s . . . a process all the time. Maybe you hear the melody first, but by the time you do the harmony, the melody can change, and vice versa. The two interact. It’s like molding a block of clay.”

The piece in E-flat starts quietly and meditatively, with the words clearly set so that they are not obscured.

“In the second stanza, it touches on minor, relative minor. Then it comes back to E-flat major--until we reach the word ‘star.’ There is an abrupt modulation to G major. It’s quiet, though, not a big Hollywood film-style modulation. It’s just like the [speaker’s] head looks up and looks at the stars. That’s where the epiphany is in the poem, in the word ‘stars.’ ”

Alexander invited the composer to include a few instruments if he chose.

“I had the idea of an offstage trumpet,” Ticheli said. “But it just wasn’t working. It comes back to the issue of purity. There is nothing more pure than a cappella. Even one instrument would be getting in the way of this poem’s DNA.

“I spent a lot of time singing, to the point that my voice got hoarse. I have to feel the music. When I write instrumental music, I use my trumpet a lot. When I wrote, I sang every part. The soprano line I sang in falsetto.”

Had it been intended as an orchestral piece, the composer would have had considerably more work to do.

“When you’re finished with a choral piece, you’re done,” he said. “When I was finished with this, I thought, ‘I have nothing else to do. That’s great.’ ”

* John Alexander will conduct the Pacific Chorale in the world premiere of Frank Ticheli’s “There Will Be Rest” on Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. The a cappella program also will include music by French and Russian composers. $16-$46. (Student/senior tickets at $8 may be bought one hour before curtain, subject to availability.) (714) 556-2787.