This piece was awarded the 2023 American Prize in composition for short choral works.

The Second Coming was written in reaction to events that took place in July of 2020. In my home city of Portland, Oregon, federal troops were dispatched to quell peaceful protests that brought light to systemic injustice. These troops detained suspected protestors without probable cause, using unmarked vehicles to transport them to undisclosed locations. At hearing this news, combined with the existing fears surrounding a raging global pandemic, I was filled with a sense of apocalyptic dread. This same dread is expressed by William Butler Yeats’s poem of approximately 100 years ago, written after a period of war and disease. Yeats refers to history existing in a set of two conical spirals, which he terms “gyres”. At this point in history, he believed that the world was transitioning from one gyre to another, and at this confluence, some manner of apocalyptic revelation would take place.

This piece employs two main sets of musical material: one being the tone set D, E, G#, A, and B, which can be heard transposed, inverted, and quoted throughout the piece; the other focuses on bitonality between the keys of F major and B major. F and B being a tritone apart from one another, the tonic triads of these keys form three successive tritones. Being 6 chromatic semitones apart, this creates the musical numerical symbol 666, which is used to inspire a similar sense of apocalyptic dread. Additionally, sections of rhythmic ostinati feature the alto, tenor, and bass repeating patterns consisting of 3, 4, 7, and eventually 12 eighth notes, which have been used by numerologists to represent purity, holiness and perfection. In this instance, their inclusion may be interpreted in one of two ways: 1. That to put one’s faith in systems that are considered sacred and unchangeable is foolish, as those same systems can be what create the chaos we now see, or 2. That amidst the fear, chaos and hopelessness we experience on the surface level, there is some hope that some purity lies beneath the madness, and will be able to make the world whole again. The interpretation, I leave wholly in the heart of the listener.