The Music of Elizabeth Alexander

How To Sing Like a Planet

A genre-defying “instruction manual” as whimsical and varied as the singing planet which inspired it

Music: Elizabeth Alexander

Words: Elizabeth Alexander

This musical “instruction manual” is as whimsical as the singing planet which inspired it. A genre-defying showpiece evoking both the ethereal and the “grooving”, How To Sing Like a Planet offers up equal portions of wisdom, humor, humility and common sense. A prominent and colorful piano part undergirds this sparkling romp.

A note about the SATB publication: The newly revised version (SEA-105-03) contains some very minor pitch changes in measures 36, 37 and 108, which may be perused by opening the “SATB piano – Choral Score” accordian folder below. (They are easy to write into your score!) If you have already purchased copies of SEA-105-01 and would prefer a PDF license for new copies or replacement pages, don’t hesitate to ask! I apologize for any confusion this has caused you or your singers. I hope you’re having fun with this song! -E.A.

Details and Ordering Information

Tell me more

Composer Notes

Composer Notes

How To Sing Like a Planet was inspired by a news article by the same title, written by gregarious San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford. Using a recent science report as a springboard, Morford spun out a delicious riff about the irrepressible music that the earth makes just by being itself. His glorious, over-the-top phrases described “…all sorts of curious tonal phrases that bounce around the mountains and spin over the oceans and penetrate the tectonic plates and gurgle in the magma and careen off the clouds and smack into trees and bounce off your ribcage and spin over the surface of the planet in strange circular loops.” Wow, I thought. Could we sing that kind of music?

While I didn’t actually set Morford’s words to music, his unfettered imagination (and provocative title) got me off and running. I decided to write a little “instruction manual” for how one might sing like a planet. I called on my son Oliver to help brainstorm, both because he had studied earth science more recently than I and because of his own irrepressible creativity. Oliver helped me remember principles like harmonic motion and oscillation, phenomena like the earth’s wobble, and the primacy of the four basic planetary forces — gravity, electricity, weak force and strong force. I also borrowed some ideas from my yoga teacher Paul Busch, whose radical notions include the conviction that gravity is our friend, and the suggestion that wobbling is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Text

How To Sing Like a Planet

“Scientists now say the planet itself is generating a…kind of music, huge, swirling loops of sound, a song so strange you can’t really fathom it, so low it can’t be heard by human ears.” Mark Morford, from “How To Sing Like a Planet,” San Francisco Chronicle

Let everything unfold in its own time.
Accept what’s beyond your control.
Revel in simple harmonic motion.
Turn. Rotate.

Get charged up.
Be weak. Be strong.
Don’t fight friction.
Vibrate sympathetically.
Don’t be afraid to get into a groove.

Let gravity have its way with you.
Revolve around something luminous.

Wheel, whirl,
Slide, collide,
Circle, cycle,
Amble, gambol,
Resonate, radiate,
Innovate, renovate,
Oscillate, fluctuate, circumnavigate, flow.

Bloom periodically.
Hunker down when you must.
Wobble from time to time without apology.

Know that annihilation’s possible any time,
But expect a bright tomorrow’s coming anyway.

Elizabeth Alexander
© 2011 by Elizabeth Alexander

Performers

Performers

SATB
Premiere: Michigan Youth Chamber Singers / Eugene Rogers (Ann Arbor, MI)
Angelica Cantanti Alumnae Choir / Nancy Grundahl (Blooomington, MN)
Choir of Arlington Street Church / Mark David Buckles (Boston, MA)
Greenhills H.S. Choir / Ben Cohen (Ann Arbor, MI)
Massachusetts All State High School Honors Choir (MMEA) / Rollo Dilworth (Boston, MA)
National Youth Choir / Rollo Dilworth (New York City, NY)
New Jersey All-State Chorus / Rollo Dilworth (Atlantic City, NJ)
Quintessence: Choral Artists of the Southwest / Matthew Greer (Albuquerque, NM)
Ripon College Choral Union / John C. Hughes (Ripon, WI)
Singapore American School Chorale / Eugene Rogers. Singapore American School Music Festival (Singapore, SINGAPORE)
University of Wisconsin-Madison Summer Music Clinic / James Kinchen (Madison, WI)
Vocal Arts Institute Chorale / James Pecar (Ann Arbor, MI)
Washington All-State Honor Symphonic Choir / Rollo Dilworth (Yakima, WA)

TBB
Premiere: ACDA Minnesota Boy’s Honors Choir / Eugene Rogers. ACDA Minnesota Conference (Saint Peter, MN)
Male Ensemble Willamette / Wallace Long (Salem, OR)