Lady Musick Speaketh - 5’

SSAATTBB (2024)

Text taken from Catherine Winkworth’s English Translation (1855) of Martin Luther’s carol Von Himmel hoch, da komm ich her

Commissioned by The New York Virtuoso Singers, conductor Harold Rosenbaum

Extreme[ly Good] Design - 8’

Picc., Fl., Cl., Sop. Sax., 2 Sops (2023)

Commissioned and premiered by InfraSound Ensemble

Mortura Filia - 13’

Sop., Fl., Vc. + Fixed Media (2023)

Text by Susan Bywaters and taken from the biblical story of Jepthe

Commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Chemie

When You Leave Me - 10’

Tbn., Tba., 2 Pnos., Sop. (2021)

Text by Susan Bywaters

Recorded by Evan Amoroso, trombone, Tyler Woodbury, tuba, Elizabeth Gartman, soprano, Sila Senturk, Ignacio Ojeda, pianos

(Mvts: I. When you leave, II. I Am Important, III. My Children’s Children, IV. You Leave Me Less)

Mixed by David Nguyen

The Last Call - 9’

Sop. + Perc. (2021)

Text by Marcus Jefferson

premiered by Elizabeth Gartman & Jonathan Collazo

Photo by Jessie Ragsdale

Monster Study - 7’

2 Sops., Vla., Vc. (2018)

Texts compiled by Susan Bywaters and Elizabeth Gartman from Mary Tudor’s graduate thesis in 1939, later made public by the University of Iowa and a public domain article by San Jose Mercury News. Additional text written by composer.

Monster Study takes aim at the dangerous power of labels.   In this horrific study, it was the fraught label of “stutterer” that caused the orphans in the 1939 study (including those with and without speech difficulties)  to struggle to speak. Mary’s test subjects heeded her terrifying instructions too well: “Don’t speak unless you can do it right.” Many chose, as a result, not to speak at all. Mary, herself a 22-year old female student scientist in the notoriously misogynistic 1930’s, was assigned this experiment and this process by her older male professor; nevertheless, her resulting label—“monster”—completely ended her budding scientific career.   

Both the orphans and Mary were silenced by this dangerous study.  In 2003, Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times reported: “Only now, at a remove of decades, can we begin to digest and appreciate what the Tudor study tells us about the origins of speech defects, as well as the ethics of science, the brittleness of children, and the egos of driven men.”