Advent (Trumper.Sopran.Piano) For more than 10 years now, I have been composing pieces based on stained-glass windows at my church, St. George’s Episcopal Church in Arlington, Virginia. In the summer of 2017, my efforts culminated with a recording project in the nave of St. George’s to record five of these compositions, each of which relate to the themes and artwork of the windows. The particular themes are the stories of Creation, Daniel, Epiphany, the Crucifixion, and Judgement Day. Sunlight, streaming through St. George’s windows, breaks into a prismatic rainbow, and for this reason, I call this group of compositions “Refracted Light.” In 2012, I began to compose Advent, which, despite its name, is the piece I wrote to go with St. George’s Crucifixion Window. I was greatly moved by a poem of the same name by the late American Poet Laureate, Donald Hall. My intention was to provide a “Trinity” of flexible variations for each of the three stanzas. Each stanza, therefore, has a set of three variations, making a total of nine iterations of the melody first sung at the beginning by the soprano. Stanley Curtis
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