A Soldier's Grave (SSATBB div. + soloist) (2019)
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A Soldier’s Grave is a 10-minute musical epic featuring four soloists, employing dramatic dynamic contrast and conveying the profound emotional toll of war on the soldiers in the field. The entire piece takes place in a veteran’s memory (my great grandfather’s specifically) as the rain falling on his bedroom window transports him back in time to digging a grave for a fallen comrade with his platoon while a battle rages on around them.
Premiere recording by Coro Volante, L. Brett Scott, and ABLAZE Records in Cincinnati, OH— 5/8/2022
Program Notes
My great-grandfather, Cpt. Newton Gale Bush, wrote the poem A Soldier' s Grave about his time in France during WWI. In my interpretation, the entirety of the piece takes place in his memory, a narrative choice meant to highlight the long term mental health effects of war on the soldiers who serve. In this flashback, his comrades and their chaplain hold an impromptu funeral ceremony at the grave of a fallen soldier while war rages on around them. Throughout my setting of the text, there are aleatoric element that depict both the literal soundscape and the psychological experience of the ceremony. The frequent changing of tonal centers represents the instability of the soldiers' psyches, with soloists rep- resenting individual characters throughout the piece. The piece ends with a group prayer, not present in the original text, sung by a small ensemble. The choice of prayer is a dedication to my grand- mother, Mary Catherine Bush Lachney, who has her own military history; she was present at Pearl Harbor and served as a nurse in WWII. She was devoutly Catholic with a deep love for the Virgin Mary, hence my use of the prayer, “Hail Mary”.
Something More Personal
I would like to note that a history of war exists on both sides of my family: my American mother's side as stated above, as well as my Vietnamese father's side. He was a pilot during the Vietnam war, and escaped Vietnam as a refugee after the Fall of Saigon (1975). It is important to me to explore both of these aspects of my lineage in my art, and to point out that the experience of being a veteran in one's home country (like my great-grandfather) is very different than the experience of being a veteran and a refugee. The latter, and how it affected my father and his relationships, which he then passed down to me and my siblings, is explored in my other works such as Ba— poems from Ocean, String Quartet No.1, and more.
