The fear of death in Sleep by Eric Whitacre
The song Sleep by Eric Whitacre is a choral piece of music that is both audibly beautiful and lyrically powerful, and I believe the combination of both of those factors gives this music a deeper meaning than what you experience by just listening. The poem itself isn't very reminiscent of death, it alone could represent a child's fear of the dark or protecting your child from the world, which is what my choral director in high school believed the whole song to be about. But I feel like the chords of the song add a different meaning.
The composer Eric Whitacre is well known throughout the choral world, and his music influenced me a lot in my decision to come to the Conservatory. His music is sometimes criticized because of his access use of dissonance at seemingly random times. This is a meme I found today that today that shows this.
But in Sleep, I feel like the use is necessary in portraying a deeper message in the music. For those who may not know, dissonance is the sound created when two notes are sing/played that are not harmonious which each other, imagine what a toddler would do while sitting at a piano for the first time, they just slam their hands down and hit keys. I think it is fun to do in a choir, and the chords in Sleep are a great example of using this element of music correctly. As said in an article in the Choral Journal, "Despite their lavish harmonies, the voice leading of individual voice parts is relatively simple. The pitch content of most voice parts consists of stepwise motion and triadic outline. It is the combination and intersection of simple voice parts that creates the frequently dense harmonic language exhibited in this repertoire.". The dense harmonic language tells a story by itself, of someone longing for more as the music builds to a climax, and then they breakthrough to the other side of this fear in an explosion of angelic singing, and then you add text.
The text added to the harmonies shows the full picture of what I feel this song is about. The first hint of this is in the beginning about a minute in with the text "With closing eyes and resting head I know that sleep is coming soon.". The chord on soon is very ominous, it is made of 2 clashing sets of notes, making is seem like the sleep coming soon is not desirable. The next set finishes with the words "a thousand pictures fill my head", and this I can only interpret as the person is living old cherished memories of their life that is slowly fading, and the chords here are uncharacteristically normal for Whitacre, major chords with no dissonance, maybe this could be to share that the person's life was happy. The text which occurs during the rise of the piece, "What dreams may come, both dark and deep", is about the person thinking about the afterlife and what is coming for them. The "dreams" represent the two different paths of the afterlife, heaven or hell, and which is the person going to. The male voices are singing "dark and deep", representing hell with the notes being very low and moving down harmonically. The female voices are singing the text "Of flying wings and soaring leap", above the male parts which represents heaven and the angels calling which is very clear if you listen to the music. This section builds on itself until it reaches a tipping point, and at this point there are no lyrics, just singing on the same syllable of "Ah", and at this I interpret it as being that the person has died and has gone to heaven and is listening to an angelic chorus greeting him. The ending of the piece is calm and simple, repeating the word "sleep" again and again, until it eventually fades out and the person is at rest.
The song has more to it than just this, I didn’t have room to talk about the middle section of the piece, but it too has great text painting. I believe that music has the power to tell a story that gives more meaning than a poem can do alone, and I believe the poetry has the power to be more influential when it is set to music. This song in my opinion proves this to be so. The fear of death can be seen in the song, and when you listen to the song thinking from the perspective of death, I feel that it adds something deeper to it.
Here Is a link to a video of the song with the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLSRVE3t17E
Larson, A. (2006). Textual density in the choral music of eric whitacre. Choral Journal, 47(6), 22-33. Retrieved from http://proxy.library.umkc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.umkc.edu/docview/1033633?accountid=14589
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