Catalogue

Program Note:

Rochester, Minnesota is home of the Mayo Clinic, one of the most renowned medical institutions in the world. Many members of the Choral Arts Ensemble (the commissioning organization) are involved with Mayo in some way or another, and I thought it would be appropriate to create a piece that honors that connection. In thinking of text associated with a medical institution, I immediately thought of the Hippocratic Oath, a promise that physicians make to uphold ethical standards while practicing medicine. I then began thinking about oaths more broadly: What does it mean to take an oath? What are you promising when you do so? To whom are you making that oath?

There are all sorts of oaths we take in society, and they typically mark an initiation of sorts. There are more well-known oaths such as the Oath of Office, the Fiduciary Oath, the Oath of Citizenship, the Scout Oath, and the Marriage Oath. There are also lesser-known oaths such as the Pauper’s Oath (declaring insolvency), oaths taken by knights during the Middle Ages, and various religious oaths.

Rather than using the exact text for several oaths, I decided to write a set of my own, each one based off an existing oath. The work is split up into four movements, each movement reflecting a different structural aspect of an oath: invoking, declaring, committing, and bearing responsibility.

At their core, oaths are about protection, something that is deeply engrained in our human instincts. A child might protect a stuffed animal just as their parent protects them. It gives us a sense of purpose to be responsible for others. We can protect too much or not enough. If you over or under protect, people can get hurt. We can protect people emotionally and physically. We can also protect ourselves. We all want to feel safe and when we don’t have protection, we can act out of desperation and irrationality. 

In many ways, the idea of protection is at the center of our current divisiveness as a country. People are concerned about protecting their rights, their finances, their livelihoods, their sense of what they know about the world. When we sense that somebody is after our protections, we feel threatened. Who knows how we will look back on this moment, but I hope that this piece serves a vignette of how we are collectively feeling and working our way through it.

I. Invocation

I swear
I solemnly swear
on my honor

So help me God

II. Declaration (to a higher power) - after the Pauper’s Oath and Kol Nidre

I come to you
I come with hands,
both empty and bare,

I come as I am—
Unadorned,
Empty but true

So help me God