The first major work by MSC Presents’ #1 best-selling composer Francesca Hauser, commissioned and premiered by Modern Sound Collective, Parturition is a deeply moving new four-movement choral work, crafting a cathartic musical narrative on topics of childbirth, concealed pain, and the artist’s journey.
Incorporating Hauser’s resonant, contemporary writing style, and setting powerful texts from Mina Loy, Lola Ridge, and Psalm 22, Parturition interweaves forces of SATB choir, piano, and (optional) atmospheric spatial electronics to create an emotionally charged, musically gratifying soundscape.
At approximately twenty minutes long, this work contains intuitive melodic lines with occasional divisi, approachable to a wide variety of ensembles looking to captivate their audience with their next season’s major work. Drawing on ever-relevant themes of feminism, motherhood, creativity, and perseverance, this piece may be supplemented with a separately sold Audio Package, complete with a simple step-by-step guide for executing the optional electronics component, along with a fully prepared Qlab workspace and corresponding folder of performance-ready .wav files.
*AUDIO PACKAGE SOLD SEPARATELY, click here for details*
Scores for individual movements also available [coming soon]:
Movement 1: I Am The Centre
Movement 2: I Should Be Consonant
Movement 3: I Am Climbing A Mountain
Movement 4: I Thought To Die
VIEW PERUSAL SCORE:
MSC0025A – Parturition [Full Score] – SCORE PERUSAL PDF
PROGRAM NOTE:
Parturition is an extended work for choir, piano, electronics, and features text by Mina Loy and Lola Ridge alongside excerpts from Psalm 22. The piece explores abstract depictions of the painful and transformative experience of childbirth and creation, drawing parallels to the artists experience – both of which involve journeys and processes that are often romanticized and faced quietly inward.
Parturition considers how identity is formed through pain and a sustained commitment to process. It reflects on the unromantic and unavoidable nature of that process, the sense of release that comes with accepting creation as something to nurture but not control, and the discomfort of critically challenging ones identity within any creative pursuit. This largely is conveyed through imagery of a mountain; the common thread weaving all texts used in the piece together.
The fixed media used in Parturition is a combination of distorted spoken text and atmospheric field recordings mixed with synth pads. The spoken text are archival recordings of Mina Loy’s recitation of this poetry. Her recitation of the text is not meant to be easily deciphered by listeners. Rather, her spoken tone and cadence meld her text from 100 years ago with music composed in 2026, bringing this reflection firmly to the present.
The atmospheric field recordings mixed with synth pads immerse listeners on a journey up this ‘distorted mountain of agony’ (Mina Loy). Sounds of the city, cicadas, and birds create new sound environments, playing with elements of high and low frequencies in each of the movements at different points in this Journey.
ADAPTED TEXT
by Francesca Hauser
sourced from
Parturition – Mina Loy (1882-1966)
The Edge – Lola Ridge (1873-1941)
Mother – Lola Ridge
Psalm 22 (NIV)
1. I AM THE CENTRE
I thought to die that night in the solitude
where they would never find me…
But there was time . . .
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of a mountain
I do not know how long I could not count the hours
But I remember
I am the centre of a circle of pain
Exceeding its boundaries
In every direction
It seems life held
No future or past
Blow through me wind
I gather to myself
Scatter me in petals
Scatter me over the passers by
I must traverse myself
2. I SHOULD BE CONSONANT
I should be consonant in time
I should be scarcely perceptible
Scarcely a woman
I see her in starlight
I see her in gleams
I see her in my mother
I see my mother
Mother I am identical to you
3. I AM CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN
My god, my god why have you forsaken me?
I am climbing a mountain of distorted agony
Pain calls up in me
The wild beast is nearer still
The foam of a mouth is no part of myself
Many bulls surround me I cry out by day but you do not answer me
You brought me out of the womb
You lay me in the dust
My god, my god
I reach for the summit of repose which never comes
For another mountain is growing up
Scarcely myself
4. I THOUGHT TO DIE
I thought to die that night in the solitude
Where they would never find me
But there was time
And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of a mountain
Staring the abyss in the eye
I do not know how long
I could not count the hours
They ran so fast shaking my hands away
But I remember the wind came out of the grass
Touching me gently as the night grew
The cloud that covered the sky
Fell in folds about the hills
There must have been a moon
A shimmer of silver
This too I remember
And the tenderly rocking mountain
Silence, and beating stars
Dawn lay like a hand upon the world
And folded hills broke into a wonder of peaks
Stemming clear and cold
Til it bloomed like a lily
And folded hills fell in wonder of sun
Blow through me wind…
$8.00
