Daniel Elder - "Serenity"

"Serenity" by Daniel Elder

Music Copyright ©2017 Daniel Elder
Recording Copyright ©2018 Karen Kenaston-French

Purchase sheet music here: https://rb.gy/phhap6

World premiere and recording by The University of Texas Arlington A Cappella Choir, directed by Karen Kenaston-French.

"Serenity" seeks to inspire peace from within. In order to grant this healing respite from external strife, it intimately explores two chief components of vocal music: the sound of spoken word and the sound of music. With this in mind, an original text was written alongside the piece to feature each of these ideas independently. For the ear, carefully chosen alliterations and internal rhymes create pleasing chains of consonant and vowel sounds respectively. For the mind, each stanza depicts poignant and specific sensations of beauty, and a call to listen to the relaxed body's innate power. Musically these ideas combine to create a vivid escape from the tangible and the literal. "Serenity" is constructed harmonically; its development governed by the weighted use of certain tonalities. Deceptive cadences, a heavy use of the sub-dominant, and an extreme withholding of the tonic until the piece's final resolution all guide the work's organic wandering from darkness to a more profound light.