Experience Anne Kilstofte’s Music

The Inside Story of Starlight Night

Inside the Choral Music of Anne Kilstofte with the recording Meciendo, Navona Records 2024

 Question: · Choral compositions often engage with texts from various sources. Is there a particular text, be it a classic poem, a historical document, or a contemporary speech, etc. that has profoundly influenced your work?

I love to create an emotional world for each piece I compose and that includes pieces without words. But it is through words that I intend to depict the depth of a poet’s thought and imagery. Although I also write my efforts at words are paltry compared to poets that convey such profound feelings. All I can hope to do is enhance their work.

I choose poems that tend to express hard-fought emotions: hardship, loss, betrayal, love, injustice, sacrifice, hope, redemption, joy, and, of course, stars. I have around 125 pieces for choir; short, long, a cappella or with piano, orchestra, organ or in opera. I can’t choose one poet, but I’ve set writings of many who inspired me: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Charlotte Mew, Joyce Kilmer, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Dylan Thomas, Eugene Field, Witter Bynner, John Berryman, and traditional Latin and sacred texts. I sometimes dig into a poet’s work, setting several poems either in different pieces or within one piece. I like to be part of the storytelling, so structural elements are sometimes heightened. Hopkins is one I will be delving into further; there is such a wealth of expression and meaning, and his use of consonants fits so well for singing.

Question: · What aspects of choral music inspire you as a composer? Can you share a particular choral piece that you believe best encapsulates the range of human emotions and the power of music to express them?

I try to impart emotion and the power that comes with that in music. The intriguing poet Kevin Crossley-Holland inspiredSong of the Anasazi, Soft Footfalls, speaking (and singing) of loss of habitat and hardship of the American West – told through the imagery of water. He had visited Canyon de Chelly, and I set the piece as if approaching the rocks on foot, of the beauty that the rocks convey. The water, especially in the West, has carved out niches and canyons, (the Grand Canyon, of course, comes to mind if no other, but the west is full of amazingly different rock formations) and so the voices flow like water, in rivulets and streams coming from different directions. It’s meant as a sound sculpture as much as a “choral piece,” and it ends the way it would if one were simply walking away from another world. It slowly dissipates, some sounds disappearing, a few continuing on, until you are simply out of earshot. I hope that the listening of the sung word affects a change in one’s thinking. Water is so precious, so powerful, and yet so imperative, especially here in the Southwest.

Question: · What are some of the most challenging aspects of composing choral music, and how do you push the boundaries of the genre or experiment with new approaches?

I embrace composing choral music because I love to sing. I play and sing everything I write. I try to create new sounds or encapsulate new meanings by sometimes re- structuring a poem to capture or emphasize what is said. I look for new ways to express vocal sounds, not necessarily traditional sounds, but acoustical – using healthy vocal production (here you see the pedagogue at work, sitting through hours and years of voice lessons, as singer, teacher, or accompanist – always impressing healthy vocal techniques). In Soft Footfalls, for example, I use the ‘ssssssss’ of snake tongues of water, which is a consonant singers avoid. I accentuate it. In Starlight Night I use a dynamic marking found in instrumental music – but because of many text repetitions it creates freshness – something unexpected. I hope listeners feel a new perception to the words. I found Starlight Night, set in several different forms – short, long, and extended. Finally, speaking of challenges, I feel that if I haven’t fully transmitted a poet’s words, I have missed the mark. I will often change it, but it’s disappointing. I hope to always be my harshest critic.

Question: · What do you hope listeners will take away from experiencing the works on MECIENDO?

I hope that listeners will find these works as a discovery of new thoughts and perspectives, and that they will understand a different rendering of emotion. On the bottom of my website I state “Engaging listeners note by note.” Hopefully, that will come across from all of these wonderful composers in Meciendo.