And Then I Remember

Abstract

And Then I Remember is a documentary oratorio for solo soprano, solo double bass, male chorus, chamber ensemble, tape and video. The piece weaves together recorded interviews, videos and live music to retell the World War II stories of my grandmother, Taimi Lepasaar, who grew up in Estonia and survived both the Russian and German occupations of that country during the war. The focus of the piece is not the political and historical issues surrounding Estonia’s fate during World War II, but rather, the intimate, layered nature of storytelling and memory, especially the strange, subtle ways in which we remember and retell intense emotional experiences. And Then I Remember is written in twelve continuous movements. The narrative of the story is passed back and forth between the recorded voice of my grandmother and the musicians on stage. The solo soprano acts as an onstage personification of Taimi Lepasaar in the 1940s and the double bass personifies her husband, Ants Lepasaar. Both the recorded interviews and the text sung by the soprano are in English but the chorus sings excerpts from the Estonian national epic, Kalevipoeg, in Estonian. These Kalevipoeg texts respond directly to themes central to my grandmother’s stories: intense love of homeland, a wandering, epic journey, and extended rumination on fate, memory, storytelling and the passage of time. Much of the piece is built from melodic fragments written in the style of Estonian folk song. I use these melodic fragments and the call and response techniques associated with this style of singing to suggest the repetitive nature of memory and storytelling as well as to emphasize the incredibly strong nationalistic feelings that are a key part of the memory of most Estonian emigrants like my grandmother. These Estonian-style melodies gradually disappear as the narrative describes leaving Estonia near the end of the war, but the piece as a whole is conceived in a minimalist aesthetic that derives from an amplification of the natural repetitions of Estonian folk song.