Here Bullet: Performance Resources 

A note on vocal range and voice types:

Because this piece was written for a consortium of singers, the range and tessituras of the songs avoid extremes or include optional notes for performance. I am happy to arrange pieces to accommodate gender-affirming vocal ranges or an alternative voice type. Please include a note when you purchase your score or contact me to request a complimentary arrangement.

Movement 1. Here, Bullet

High key range: b3 - f#5 (optional g)
Low key range: b2 - f#4 (optional g)

Text by Brian Turner
If a body is what you want
then here is bone and gristle and flesh.
Here is the clavicle-snapped wish,
the aorta’s opened valves, the leap
thought makes at the synaptic gap.
Here is the adrenaline rush you crave,
that inexorable flight, that insane puncture into heat and blood. And I dare you to finish what you’ve started. Because here, Bullet, here is where I complete the word you bring hissing through the air, here is where I moan the barrel’s cold esophagus, triggering
my tongue’s explosives for the rifling I have inside of me, each twist of the round
spun deeper, because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends, every time.

Composer Notes:
“Here, Bullet” is radically innovative poetry— firsthand poetic descriptions of 21st Century warfare by an established poet at the height of his powers. I approached this work with great respect and trepidation, seeking ways to amplify the raw, visceral power of the poetic descriptions. The music starts tentatively, then the pace picks up at measure eight with an ostinato in the piano part mirroring the language in the poetry “Here is the adrenaline rush you crave”, crystalizing in a musical gesture the fear and crazed excitement which drives the piece to the very end. The descriptive beauty of the poetry is highly charged (“Here is bone and gristle

and flesh...here is the clavicle snapped wish...that insane puncture into heat and blood”). I sought a musical language steeped in expressive dissonance coupled with an angular vocal line to pair with the beauty and horror of the verses. There is a kind of musical arrival at the lines “... here is where the world ends every time”, which then leads directly to the final plaintive calling out for the Bullet in a mixture of horror, defiance, and even resignation. This is poetry unsparing in its intensity.

Movement 2. Eulogy

High key range: b3 - e5
Low key range: b2 - e4

Text by Brian Turner
It happens on a Monday, at 11:20 A.M.,
as tower guards eat sandwiches
and seagulls drift by on the Tigris River. Prisoners tilt their heads to the west
though burlap sacks and duct tape blind them. The sound reverberates down concertina coils the way piano wire thrums when given slack. And it happens like this, on a blue day of sun, when Private Miller pulls the trigger

to take brass and fire into his mouth:
the sound lifts the birds up off the water,
a mongoose pauses under the orange trees,
and nothing can stop it now, no matter what
blur of motion surrounds him, no matter what voices crackle over the radio in static confusion,
because if only for this moment the earth is stilled, and Private Miller has found what low hush there is down in the eucalyptus shade, there by the river.

PFC B. Miller (1980 - March 22, 2004)

Composer Notes:
“Eulogy” might just be my favorite poem in Brian Turner’s collection. It’s deeply personal, and there are few topics more personal than suicide (especially when the victim is a fellow soldier with the poet serving in Iraq).The poem starts with a description of a seemingly normal outdoor scene (“tower guards eating sandwiches...) which soon hints at something darker - the tragedy of Private Miller taking his own life as the reactions of nature and wildlife unfold around him.

Nineteenth Century Romantic poets idealized Nature, so I paired this poetic scene with musical choices that one might find in a mid-century Romantic work by Chopin or Mendelssohn. The poem simultaneously presents two completely dichotomous scenes (Nature vs. Private Miller’s suicide)—in a similar manner I used two contrasting arpeggiated harmonies in Db Major and e minor as the musical basis for the setting.

As the centerpiece of the poem, Private Miller gets his own leitmotif—for this I used more rapidly changing, traditional harmonies in an attempt to call to mind a kind of bastardized version of a Bach chorale. I imagined the solemnity of a chorale, providing honor and respect to the chaos of the situation, especially important considering that Turner tells us in public interviews that Private Miller wasn’t properly recognized among the honored dead upon their return from active duty. (It should be noted that a version of the leitmotif reappears in the setting of “Curfew” at the appearance of another individual who deserves our sympathy—Sgt. Gutierrez remembering the act of comforting a man who cupped bits of his friend’s brain in his hands.)

As the music builds to a final climax, we return to the sweeping Romantic arpeggios that bring us back to Nature in all its unsettling Romantic glory.

Movement 3. A Soldier’s Arabic

High key range: d-flat4 - f5
Low key range: d-flat3 - f4

Text by Brian Turner
The word for love, habib, is written from right to left, starting where we would end it
and ending where we might begin.

Where we would end a war
another might take as a beginning,
or as an echo of history, recited again.

Speak the word for death, maut,
and you will hear the cursives of the wind driven into the veil of the unknown.

This is a language made of blood. It is made of sand, and time.
To be spoken, it must be earned.

Composer Notes:
A poem that begins with a translation of the word ‘love’ into Arabic, as we find in “A Soldier’s Arabic”, demands a more self-consciously lyrical approach. The poem has no obvious or implied descriptions of violence, giving us a momentary pause from descriptions of the trauma of warfare. Spoken text is very important to this setting, with the poet himself telling us “Speak the word for death...” and later

“This is a strange new kind of war where you learn just as much as you are able to believe.” —Ernest Hemingway

“To be spoken, it must be earned”. As a composer I love the special kind of urgency created when spoken text floats over music, so I was happy to comply. Reciting the text in its entirety as a kind of coda pays homage to the rich tradition of poetic recitation, and is a fitting end to this wonderfully ambiguous poem.

Movement 4. A Soldier’s Arabic

High key range: c-flat4 - f5
Low key range: c-flat3 - f4

Text by Brian Turner
At dusk, bats fly out by the hundreds. Water snakes glide in the ponding basins behind the rubbled palaces. The mosques call their faithful in, welcoming

the moonlight as prayer.

Today, policemen sunbathed on traffic islands and children helped their mothers
string clothes to the line, a slight breeze filling them with heat.

There were no bombs, no panic in the streets. Sgt. Gutierrez didn’t comfort an injured man who cupped pieces of his friend’s brain
in his hands; instead, today,

white birds rose from the Tigris.

Composer Notes:
Trauma and incredibly vivid descriptions of violence are never far off in Turner’s poems. Even when the scene is at its most benign and idyllic (as it is in “Curfew”), a memory or a potential disaster is right around the corner. So a picture of bats flying out at dusk, water snakes gliding in ponding basins, policemen sunbathing on traffic islands, even children helping their mothers is of course juxtaposed with a linguistic negative: an announcement that Sgt. Guitierrez did not comfort a man who cupped pieces of his friend’s brain in his hands. These are poems from the Iraq War by a poet who saw it all firsthand - this is what we should expect.

The mood I created in my setting has a marked sense of timelessness using static harmonies, an exaggeratedly slow tempo, deep and rich harmonies, and subtle color shifts that underscore the feeling of ease at dusk. We hear ease to match the scene, but violence and trauma are never far off, referenced by unexpected stabbing rhythmic gestures in the highest registers in the piano. The lyric and the languid are adjacent to the dissonant and the discordant—in art as in life.

The music we hear when Sgt. Gutierrez is mentioned is a direct reference to the music we hear when Private Miller is introduced in the second song (“Eulogy”) earlier in the set. Both characters are associated with more traditional diatonic chord progressions that change on every beat - I had in mind a bastardized version of Bach chorales (with their rapidly changing harmonic rhythms) one might hear as part of a funeral service. The use of a unique leitmotiv with each character underscores their importance and shines a light on the human costs of the war. Here is where the abstract becomes personal.

Another musical technique I used in this setting is the use of musical ciphers to spell out names and important parts of the poem using a code based on the musical alphabet. In public presentations of his poems, Turner speaks of the injustice when a Colonial addressing the troops at a parade ground neglects to name Private Miller among those killed in Iraq, perhaps because he died by suicide and not a “soldier’s death”. Turner writes a poem about Private Miller as a way of honoring his colleague; putting Miller’s name in a cipher and giving him a leitmotif associated with human suffering is another small way to recognize and honor the memory of all soldiers who perished in the war. So ‘Miller’ gets spelled out musically, the same way ‘Love’ gets spelled out, referencing the first line in the poem “A Soldier’s Arabic” (“The word for love is written from right to left...”)

There is an emotional trajectory in the set that moves from trauma to a kind of acceptance. The first song Here, Bullet ends with the repeated refrain “Here Bullet!”—the last song also ends with a repeated refrain, but this time the repeated refrain is “Today!”, referencing not bullets and violence to the flesh but instead the absence of bombs, panic, and the idyllic scene of white birds rising from the Tigris.

SAMPLE PROGRAMS

9/11 and/or Veteran’s Day themed concert

(Noontime Concert Series | San Francisco, CA)

1. Here, Bullet - Kurt Erickson
2. Aftermath - Ned Rorem

Americana: Carrying Gravity

(Cincinnati Song Initiative)

1. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot / Steal Away / Give Me Jesus / Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child Harry T. Burleigh Spirituals
2. The Things Our Fathers Loved / The Greatest Man / In the Alley / Tom Sails Away / He is There! Charles Ives
3. Here, Bullet (Winner, 2020 NATS Art Song Composition Competition) Kurt Erickson
4. Preach Sister, Preach Evan Mack

Additional offerings for residencies and performances:

Composer Kurt Erickson can add to performances of Here Bullet in multiple ways:

• On Site Residency

• Hour Long Live Virtual Talk (Zoom)

• Pre-Recorded Video Greeting and/or Talk

Possible Residency Activities

• Writing for the Voice: My 10-Year Plan (Talk)

• Text Setting and the Poetic Muse - What I Gained From My Years As A Comparative Literature Groupie and Poetry Junkie (Talk)

• Collaborative Commissions: Entrepreneurial Approaches for Composers (Talk) Masterclass - Open Rehearsal

• Formal and Informal Talks with Composition/Theory Program Students

• Formal and Informal Talks with Singers

• Outreach

• Pre-Concert talks with the audience

• Mid-Concert Interviews

Possible Virtual Zoom Talks

• Writing for the Voice: My 10-Year Plan

• Collaborative Commissions: Entrepreneurial Approaches for Composers

• Text Setting and the Poetic Muse - What I Gained From My Years As A Comparative Literature Groupie and Poetry Junkie

Individualized Videos Made for the Presenting Organization

• Host video on an organizational website or social media site

• Screen before concert

• Other uses, as discussed

PURCHASE DIGITAL SCORES