Kevin Puts, And Legions Will Rise

Some of the selections I make for this series are the result of careful planning and others come about on pure whim. I have some guiding principles—aesthetic, legal, and pedagogical—that constrain me only a little. I try to present works that I think will interest you or that I think ought to interest you. And I try to balance representative works of major composers with less well known and contemporary ones.

Occasionally I look back at the list (now in a searchable index) to see where we’ve been and what might need a little more attention. I thought we had done more new music lately than we actually have. (“New music” is a term that used to inspire some wariness.) The only living composers we have looked at this year are Hagen, Vasks, Elder, and Jay Ungar’s popular Ashokan Farewell. I hope those have given you a greater interest in “new music.” But we need to have living composers better represented.

Let’s add Kevin Puts (b. 1972) to the list, a Pulitzer Price winner in 2012 for his opera Silent Night. In addition to opera, Puts’ compositions include orchestral works in classic forms, such as symphonies, concertos, and string quartets. He has also composed works for chorus and works for wind band.

The chamber work featured here, And Legions Will Rise, was composed in 2001. Puts describes it as

about the power in all of us to transcend during times of tragedy and personal crisis. While I was writing it, I kept imagining one of those war scenes in blockbuster films, with masses of troops made ready before a great battle. I think we have forces like this inside of us, ready to do battle when we are at our lowest moments.

Written for the Japanese-born marimbist, Makoto Nakura, the work premiered in Kobe, Japan.