her soul in the stars - string orchestra (2024)

HER SOUL IN THE STARS  (2024) - for String Orchestra 

Instrumentation: 

Violin 1

Violin 2

Viola

Violoncello

Contrabass

Duration ca. 10'

Program Note: 

Her Soul in the Stars for string orchestra is a dramatic scena, an elegiac song of farewell. The first violins are the continuous song which begins earthbound with voices in unison. A tension emerges, a blossoming from pure unison expanding like a natural process to a cluster of closely moving notes, then organically rising into a high, floating luminous richly harmonized paean. This aria of farewell cycles like waves of the sea several times in the work, as if gravity itself brings the song back to a beautiful yet dissonant earth before resuming the ever-higher journey upwards. 

Most of the other sections of the string orchestra, the second violins, violas, and cellos, console the singer. They echo the phrases, support with glowing harmony, and move gently in counterpoint, rising and falling in turn. 

The double basses however stand apart. Their deeply sonorous and resonant, ringing and profound plucked notes offer a deep consolation like a beating heart, a third element joining but apart from the other voices. While the higher instruments suspend time and space, the basses mark the passage of time like a deeply tolling bell. It is not until the final chord of the work that the basses join the others by using their bows, a profound sustained low bass note finally accepting and joining the final shimmering chord that fades into the unknown beyond the stars. The final glowing chord is C sharp major, which for musicians is a transcendental key of all “sharpened” or heightened notes, reaching above, together. 

Her Soul in the Stars is an expansion of the slow movement of my four-movement String Quartet, expanded in orchestration from string quartet to string orchestra and expanded in time, with the duration of Her Soul in the Stars being about ten minutes, about half again as long as its source.  Both works were completed in 2024.

MEDIA:

Corey Field - Her Soul in the Stars

The Budapest Scoring Orchestra 

Conducted by  Ábel Tompa

First Leaf Music Label

Available for streaming on all leading digital music services:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/53QLpsVFmSQcOZJptx66yG?si=cB2O1KL6SUet-tuuokxqkg

Apple:  https://music.apple.com/us/album/her-soul-in-the-stars/1771691051?i=1771691052

YouTube (with scrolling score): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cTJ52tDE_wE

PUBLICATION:

Study Score for Sale:  https://www.subitomusic.com/product/field-her-soul-in-the-stars/

Full Score and Parts:  Available on rental from Subito Music Corp.