speech for the president to give in case...
Jack W. Stamps
About this work:
Fully titled, "speech for the president to give in case the astronauts were stranded on the moon"
I have always been fascinated by NASA’s space exploration program and specifically of the lunar landings. Being
born in the year of the first landing, I grew up, hand in hand, with the culture and mystique of lunar exploration. Recently, I
visited a touring exhibit of the National Archive at a San Antonio museum and saw an original draft of a speech to be delivered
by the President in the event the astronauts would be stranded on the moon. I felt a strange mixture of haunting and hope.
The words, so eloquently chosen for the most unthinkable of tragedies, devoid of religious connotations, tell of a universal
sense of hope and inquisitiveness about the universe that all mankind share. Difficult, though, was shaking the chill of imagining
a fate like being stranded on the moon while a world mourns.
I wrote this piece in an attempt to express this mixture of feelings I initially experienced when I read the speech.
Starting with a basic principle of harmonic progression as the driving force, The harmony usually moves on beats 1 and 3. I
imagined a silence on the moon so intense that all that could be heard was the astronauts own hearts beating and so the
motion of the piece is paced by this pulse.
Year composed: 2003
Duration: 00:06:00
Ensemble type: Chorus, with or without Solo Voices:Chorus with Chamber Ensemble
Instrumentation: 2 Trumpet, 1 Percussion (General), 1 Organ, 1 S, 1 A, 1 T, 1 B, 1 Theremin
Instrumentation notes: The tenor/bass duet is to be performed by soloists sitting in the audience, preferably in non-performance clothing. For
light in a dark hall, small flashlights can be used for solo passages only. The option of the soloists standing is at the discretion
of the director though the idea is to create a metaphoric gesture by having the soloists (acting as symbols for the astronauts)
among the audience (a symbol for all of mankind). In this scheme, the chorus and players are channels for this relationship
and ultimately a collective symbol for sacrifice and hope.
The theremin should be discernible only as color and not as a soloistic element. in the event that a theremin cannot
be secured for performance, a suitable substitute would be a synthesizer that can glissando between pitches. In either case, a
half second delay effect is strongly suggested.
If the chimes do not have a locking sustain pedal, a brake drum may be used to hold the pedal down for the passage
that moves quickly to the bass drum/ hi-hat combo.
Careful detail should be given to the preparation of the organ registers to ensure balance and texture through the
many slow moving crescendos and decrescendos. An assistant may be used for registers and pages.
A visual projection of the text during the performance can be added and is strongly suggested.