Chapter 16



I wrote this for our church choir (the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Princeton) but I never gave it them to perform. The text is an excerpt from Thomas Pynchon's book Mason & Dixon, and his description of dusk falling across the new America evoked a sense of quietude that I found hopefully resonant, especially still dazed by 9/11 and subsequent events. I was on sabbatical and was having trouble really revving up on the My Music Book project.

Here is the text excerpt, from the beginning of Chapter 16. I also use this in Chapter 2 of My Music Book: