Overcoming (2009)

Scored for piano and string quartet. Challenging; about 9 minutes. A semi-programmatic rhapsody on We Shall Overcome, which follows very loosely the arc of the civil rights movement. Begins with the playing of a 1-minute field recording of We Shall Overcome from the March on Selma of 1965. $20, including piano score, parts, and demo disk; order here.

Normally indifferent to pomp and ceremony, on January 20, 2009, I found myself, as I watched the inauguration of the first person of color as President of the United States, with a lump in my throat.  Millions watched on television.  Thousands made the journey and braved the cold to attend.  People, some old enough to have been denied the right to vote, wept.  We have indeed come a long way.  And, having lived through the 60’s, I remember that it has not been easy.  I could not help but feel a deep sense of gratification that—in this regard at least—we have matured somewhat as a people.

The piece begins with a quiet evocation of a beautiful idea—that inequality will be overcome.  A relatively brief period of optimism gives way to the struggle.  Roughly halfway through this, another tune important to the movement, Keep Your Eyes on the Prize, appears.  This section is eventually succeeded by another that celebrates the ascendancy of justice in a vague, nostalgic wash of songs that attended those years: Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind and The Times They Are a-Changin’, John Lennon’s Imagine, the Beatles’ Revolution, Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone, Paul McCartney’s Blackbird, and The Star-Spangled Banner.  All of this is followed by a final rumination on the “someday” phrase.  The coda begins with a pizzicato section in which the ‘cello, while the upper strings play one more variation of We Shall Overcome, quietly celebrates with a playful version of Hail to the Chief.  It shifts briefly to a sentimental tone; then, a bell-like chord in the piano, heard at several points earlier, suggests the urgent need to remember the lessons of the past.  There is yet much, much work to be done.