A river never touches the same hand twice - Solo Harp

Ensemble: Solo Harp

Duration: 3 minutes

Written: Summer 2026

Program Note:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
-Heraclitus

I first came to Ogontz White Mountain Camp as a child with The Chorus of Westerly, and worked there during the summers in college. Over a decade later, I wrote A river during their 2026 Choral Symposium, singing Johannes Brahms's Requiem and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Missa Papae Marcelli.

I roamed the camp and sketched what would become A river during our rehearsal breaks, quizzing myself on different ferns, hopping over fences to pull invasive plants, and noting how much the camp remained unchanged from when I was a child. On the symposium's final day, I set out for an old and beloved shortcut trail, behind the staff housing and down a hidden slope.

When working here, I traversed this river with a log bridge, darting back and forth between our staff housing kitchen facilities hundreds of times. In 2026 to my surprise, woodland species filled in the other side of the path, and the log had washed away. I looked down at the river, clear as ever, admiring her like an old friend. Those rushing noises have sung me to sleep since I was nine; she had seen nearly every iteration of me. I put my hand in the river, and in the weeks that followed, my hand became cool alongside the memory.

In A River, the performer alters the harp pedals between musical repetitions, while the left and right-hand material remains nearly identical. (A loving nod to my favorite moment in Germaine Tailleferre's Harp Sonata.) What appears unchanged at first glance takes on an entirely different quality below the surface—a fact I know well about the river, and the river knows well about me.

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