The Peace of Wild Things - Michael Conley - Harmonium Choral Society

Earthsongs - June 2023
Under the direction of Dr. Anne J. Matlack
Harmonium Choral Society
Morristown United Methodist Church, Morristown, NJ
Teddy Love, oboe
Video created by Friends of the Drew Forest ​⁠‪@friendsofthedrewforest7879‬ www.friendsofthedrewforest.com/
Michael Conley has a multifaceted career as conductor, pianist, organist, singer, and composer.
For 15 seasons, he was artistic director of the West Village Chorale and was a singer/conductor/composer member of ​⁠‪@c4thechoralcomposerconduct154‬. Currently he is the music director at Calvary Presbyterian Church, San Francisco ​⁠‪@CalvarypresbyterianOrg‬. He holds degrees in composition from James Madison University in Virginia and Westminster Choir College. This setting of Wendell Berry’s poem for eight-part chorus and oboe is excerpted from the larger Appalachian Requiem. Lush and piquant harmonies and swirling phrases evoke a scene of natural beauty. The composer explains:
I had had in mind the idea of writing a large-scale work, using as supporting material traditional Southern shape-note hymns and folk music, for many years. But it wasn’t until I read an article in, of all places, GQ magazine, on the subject of mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia, that the work I would come to call Appalachian Requiem started to take shape. I was so appalled and disheartened by what I read that the idea of turning this piece into a kind of requiem first occurred to me. Not a requiem in the traditional sense, with the intent of consoling the living on the death of a fellow human being, but with the idea in mind of lamenting the loss of an old and enduring culture, and a natural heritage that continues to be under assault. While the economic and environmental consequences of mountaintop-removal mining are staggering in their own right, it is the wanton disregard for the people - the farmers and miners and families whose homes, lives, hopes, traditions, and physical environments have been permanently erased - that makes this a tragedy that diminishes us all.
The Peace of Wild Things (the “Agnus Dei” movement) is not a plea for reconciliation with God, but rather with nature itself. Berry’s beautiful poem is a powerful ode to the possibility that we can only be at peace with ourselves, and each other, when we find that calm, still place that communion with the natural world alone provides.
Full program notes available on our website: www.harmonium.org/
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