MSC Presents:
PARTURITION [MVT 4 ONLY] – “I Thought To Die”
for SATB chorus, piano, & optional electronics
texts adapted by Francesca Hauser from Mina Loy, Lola Ridge, & Psalm 22
music by Francesca Hauser

*Click here for FULL SCORE (All four movements)*
*AUDIO PACKAGE SOLD SEPARATELY, click here for details*

Scores for other individual movements also available:
Movement 1: I Am The Centre
Movement 2: I Should Be Consonant
Movement 3: I Am Climbing A Mountain
Movement 4: I Thought To Die

The first major work by MSC Presents’ #1 best-selling composer Francesca Hauser, commissioned and premiered by Modern Sound Collective, Parturition is a deeply moving new four-movement choral work, crafting a cathartic musical narrative on topics of childbirth, concealed pain, and the artist’s journey.

Incorporating Hauser’s resonant, contemporary writing style, and setting powerful texts from Mina Loy, Lola Ridge, and Psalm 22, Parturition interweaves forces of SATB choir, piano, and (optional) atmospheric spatial electronics to create an emotionally charged, musically gratifying soundscape.

At approximately twenty minutes long, this work contains intuitive melodic lines with occasional divisi, approachable to a wide variety of ensembles looking to captivate their audience with their next season’s major work. Drawing on ever-relevant themes of feminism, motherhood, creativity, and perseverance, this piece may be supplemented with a separately sold Audio Package, complete with a simple step-by-step guide for executing the optional electronics component, along with a fully prepared Qlab workspace and corresponding folder of performance-ready .wav files.

VIEW PERUSAL SCORE:

MSC0025F- Parturition [mvt 4] – SCORE PERUSAL PDF

PROGRAM NOTE:

Parturition is an extended work for choir, piano, electronics, and features text by Mina Loy and Lola Ridge alongside excerpts from Psalm 22. The piece explores abstract depictions of the painful and transformative experience of childbirth and creation, drawing parallels to the artists experience – both of which involve journeys and processes that are often romanticized and faced quietly inward.

Parturition considers how identity is formed through pain and a sustained commitment to process. It reflects on the unromantic and unavoidable nature of that process, the sense of release that comes with accepting creation as something to nurture but not control, and the discomfort of critically challenging ones identity within any creative pursuit. This largely is conveyed through imagery of a mountain; the common thread weaving all texts used in the piece together.

The fixed media used in Parturition is a combination of distorted spoken text and atmospheric field recordings mixed with synth pads. The spoken text are archival recordings of Mina Loy’s recitation of this poetry. Her recitation of the text is not meant to be easily deciphered by listeners. Rather, her spoken tone and cadence meld her text from 100 years ago with music composed in 2026, bringing this reflection firmly to the present.

The atmospheric field recordings mixed with synth pads immerse listeners on a journey up this ‘distorted mountain of agony’ (Mina Loy). Sounds of the city, cicadas, and birds create new sound environments, playing with elements of high and low frequencies in each of the movements at different points in this Journey.

ADAPTED TEXT

by Francesca Hauser

sourced from

Parturition – Mina Loy (1882-1966)

The Edge – Lola Ridge (1873-1941)

Mother – Lola Ridge

Psalm 22 (NIV)

1. I AM THE CENTRE

I thought to die that night in the solitude

where they would never find me…

But there was time . . .

And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of a mountain

I do not know how long I could not count the hours

But I remember

I am the centre of a circle of pain

Exceeding its boundaries

In every direction

It seems life held

No future or past

Blow through me wind

I gather to myself

Scatter me in petals

Scatter me over the passers by

I must traverse myself

2. I SHOULD BE CONSONANT

I should be consonant in time

I should be scarcely perceptible

Scarcely a woman

I see her in starlight

I see her in gleams

I see her in my mother

I see my mother

Mother I am identical to you

3. I AM CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN

My god, my god why have you forsaken me?

I am climbing a mountain of distorted agony

Pain calls up in me

The wild beast is nearer still

The foam of a mouth is no part of myself

Many bulls surround me I cry out by day but you do not answer me

You brought me out of the womb

You lay me in the dust

My god, my god

I reach for the summit of repose which never comes

For another mountain is growing up

Scarcely myself

4. I THOUGHT TO DIE

I thought to die that night in the solitude

Where they would never find me

But there was time

And I lay quietly on the drawn knees of a mountain

Staring the abyss in the eye

I do not know how long

I could not count the hours

They ran so fast shaking my hands away

But I remember the wind came out of the grass

Touching me gently as the night grew

The cloud that covered the sky

Fell in folds about the hills

There must have been a moon

A shimmer of silver

This too I remember

And the tenderly rocking mountain

Silence, and beating stars

Dawn lay like a hand upon the world

And folded hills broke into a wonder of peaks

Stemming clear and cold

Til it bloomed like a lily

And folded hills fell in wonder of sun

Blow through me wind…

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