Greg Sanders

Distant Hymns

Distant Hymns is the third movement from the composer's work Dreams and Faith (The Solomon Valley Anthology). The American Composers Alliance commissioned the work for their Continental Harmony Project. In the late 1880s and early 1900s, many of the inhabitants of the Solomon River area in northern Kansas meticulously documented their lives in the vast expanse of the Kansas prairie in writings in their personal diaries. Several writers recorded an unusual phenomenon where the wind often carried sounds over the open prairie and fields with no visible sound source. An example of this display was sometimes the presence of music, often church hymns, carried with the wind from assumed distant churches that were frequently not there. The melodies could be heard constantly changing in volume and sound as the winds continuously changed directions. Distant Hymns is a musical representation of this experience, where a simple hymn tune is handed to and integrated between different groups of instruments. Ebbing frequently, the music varies in loudness and softness as the melody moves freely upon the wind.