letting the live tears fall

for solo oboe

The challenge to write a solo piece for a monophonic instrument came from the 2024 Wintergreen Music Festival.  My favorite aspect of oboe has always been its bittersweet tone on long held notes, but in the context of an unaccompanied work, I also wanted to explore fast flowing passages that could give the illusion of polyphony. The resulting piece is a dialogue between these opposing elements: very sparse on one end and very active on the other.

At the time of writing this piece, I was between movements of my Homeric cantata “Because a Poet Sang” and therefore immersed in the Greek epics. While the oboe work had no specific program, I found its divergent textures and falling contours reflective of a poignant passage from the Iliad as translated by Richmond Lattimore. Hector bids his wife and infant son farewell as he leaves their home for battle. He expresses his hopes for his son to grow strong and one day surpass Hector’s own strength. His wife does not share his optimism. Lattimore writes: 

So glorious Hektor spoke and again took up the helmet / with its crest of horse-hair while his beloved wife went homeward, / turning to look back on the way, letting the live tears fall.”

• Homer, Iliad 6.494–496. translated by Richmond Lattimore

Oboe has always been a favorite instrument of mine, thanks in large part to my first piano teacher, Carol Stephenson. She taught me after retiring from an oboe career in the National Symphony Orchestra. While her reed making horror stories deterred me from picking up the oboe myself, her tales of performing in the world’s grandest concert halls with renowned conductors and soloists excited me about a life in music. There were never any double reed players at my high school, so I took advantage of the opportunity to feature oboe significantly in the early compositions of my college career. And writing for her instrument is always a great excuse to catch up with Carol, pick her brain about the oboe’s possibilities, and thank her for giving me my musical start all those years ago.

For more music featuring oboe, see “Home is a Moment” (2023) for woodwind quintet.