Jenkins is a young composer whose primary focus has been music for bands, although he has written a body of chamber music, as well. His compositions have been widely popular in the band and wind ensemble world, garnering him numerous prizes and broad recognition. A recipient of degrees from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Rice University, he presently is a member of the music faculty at Arkansas State University.
We Seven was commissioned by Joseph Parisi and the University of Missouri-Kansas City Wind Ensemble, and received its première in 2014. In addition to the wind ensemble version, there is also an arrangement for brass band; the version for symphony orchestra received its première with the Cheyenne Symphony Orchestra in 2024. The work was conceived as a tribute to the well-known early efforts of the United States in the space race, Project Mercury, upon the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its completion in 1963. It takes its name from the title of a contemporary book written by the seven original astronauts.
There two aspects of the work that are rather unusual, one being the generation of musical motifs from cryptograms that “encode” the astronauts names and initials. Musical cryptograms have a long history on the periphery of the history of music, and have been generated by a number of esoteric methods. Generally, the musical notes of the scale have been put into matrices that associate them either with numbers or other notes of the scale. Perhaps, the most famous of them is Bach’s generation of a short melodic motif—Bb A C H (H is B natural in Germany)—from the letters of his name. (There’s even a vintage short clip on YouTube of a group of jazz musicians creating a boogie-woogie tune based on that). Historically there have many complex schemes for the kinds of codes that can produce cryptograms. Sometimes, a text or name is generated with specific solfège syllables. But the intent is the same: generating musical ideas (or hiding them!) by recondite means. So, in We Seven, abandon hopes of hearing an obvious allusion to an astronaut’s name or initials. Like so many aspects of musical composition over the centuries, it’s a device part of the composer’s private aesthetic, technique, and pleasure—not the audience’s.
The other rather usual aspect of We Seven is the quotation of bits of Puccini’s great aria, “Un bel di, vedremo” from Madame Butterfly near the middle of the composition. If you are at all familiar with the opera, you’ll hear it! Apparently, John Glenn would relax from intense preparations for the missions by listening the opera. So it became part of the mix of musical elements.
We Seven opens with the lightest of gossamer-like textures in the highest register—completely appropriate for our idea of musical metaphors for outer space. Gradually, the texture thickens as more instruments enter, lower and lower. Aphoristic fragments of intervals bounce around as everything becomes denser. The “high altitude” chattering is gradually joined by a sonorous, low foundation that sounds almost like something tonal. After the resumption of the high atmospherics, we hear in the lower instruments fragmented allusions to “Un bel di,” which gradually become more powerful and strident. And lo, the attractive, but nonetheless dissonant clusters give way to broader, richer, less dissonant sonorities that gradually subdue. As it all winds down, various short melodic motifs are traded around—and this brief rumination on early experiences by the “Mercury Seven” is over—ending with a sonorous grand peroration that gradually dissipates.
--Wm. E. Runyan
©2023 William E. Runyan