The Deepest Desire: 
Four Meditations on Love
A Song Cycle for Flute, Mezzo-soprano, and Piano

"She went to the deepest waters
​of her being, and it was there she found the core of her spirituality: the deepest desire of her heart"

sisterhelen.org

 
More is Required
 
More is required than being swept along -
All the currents pulling me
Easy and wide in a long, slow drift -
Without rudder, floating backwards, now to the side.
What can one person do against a sucking tide?
I coil like a bow;
I gather like a fist;
I forge like a rudder
And I lean into the wide, slow drift.
I tack and veer by God’s pure will.
I raise my voice against the silence.
My voice alone. Until a chorus joins.
 
 
Love
 
Love is the pure energy of God: pray for it ardently.
Be grateful when it comes into your life: give of it
generously.
Lavish it on others: even the underserving ones.
Cultivate friendship with care: it is the best love of
all.
 
 
I Catch on Fire
 
Long black dress to my toes — Flowing black sleeves
And veil.
A walking bolt of black material.
Fourth grade religion class — Teaching full force:
The Gospel according to…
Lit candle.
Fifty little eyes wide.  Twenty-five voices shout:
“Sister! Sister!  You’re on fire!”
Flames shooting. Breathing.
Children, this teaches us always to be careful with
Fire.
Now, years later, when I pray
I catch on fire. Amen.
 
 
The Deepest Desire 

I thought I knew my heart’s desire:
To love God. To be with God in heaven.
A bud unfolding; A dutiful and prayerful nun
I pleased God, I thought,
By being obedient.
It made me feel holy.
 
But getting to heaven takes a long time,
And dwelling far below was a Voice, calling:
“Lose yourself!”
“Lose yourself upon the deeper currents!”
 
Then I heard cries from the heart of the city.
“Is there life before death?”
I saw. I heard. I followed.
I witnessed.
 
A desire for justice woke in me.
A fierce desire that will not let go.
The deepest desire.
The deepest desire of my heart.
“Come home!”
“Come home!”
“Come home!”
 
 
Primary Colors 

I live my life in primary colors.
I let praise or blame fall where it may.
I hold my soul in equanimity
And leave the fruits of my labors to God.
At night, when I pray, I catch on fire;
And when I put my head on the pillow,
I fall instantly to sleep.

Sister Helen, a member of the Order of St. Joseph of Medaille since 1957, began prison ministry in 1981. Based on the relationships she formed with inmates sentenced to death, she wrote a New York Times Best Selling book, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty. To this day, she continues her work to abolish the death penalty around the world, turning her experiences into poetry and further novels.     

“While living in the St. Thomas housing project, she became pen pals with Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers, sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison.” -from sisterhelen.org

In 2002, Heggie was asked by flutist Eugenia Zukerman to write a piece for the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival in Vail, Colorado. Since he had already composed Dead Man Walking, he asked Susan Graham, who had sung the role of Sister Helen, if she would be willing to be a part of the collaboration. Having regained the full use of his hand, Heggie would perform the piano part at the premier. Sister Helen, a good friend of his from their work together on Dead Man Walking, wrote six poetic meditations on love, giving them to Heggie to use in his music.

“…I asked her about her own sense of what “spirituality” means. (It is a constant struggle for me, personally.) She answered that at one point in her life she’d had to throw away all the “stuff” she’d been told she needs, the “stuff” she’d been told she must have, must pursue, must obtain. She went to the deepest waters of her being, and it was there she found the core of her spirituality: the deepest desire of her heart.” -Jake Heggie

With Sister Helen’s blessing, Heggie crafted her six meditations into poems which became the lyrics for four songs: More is required, I catch on fire, The Deepest Desire, and Primary Colors. In tandem, they represent the inception of Sister Helen’s path to spirituality, her ministry, and her personal philosophy. Her words spoke to Heggie, and through his music, to me.


The first movement is in three distinct sections: The Call, More is required, and Love. An extended flute solo represents Sister Helen’s call to serve and fight for justice. The flute is instructed to play directly into the piano while the pianist presses the sustain pedal, causing the strings to vibrate according to the tones played by the flute. An aura, similar to a far-off echo, is created underneath the phrases of the calling flute, the longest portion of the piece in which only one person plays. The opening musical idea, a descending major third interval followed by an ascending minor third, returns throughout the piece, underpinning the importance of The Call and Sister Helen’s unrelenting conviction.

At the end of the opening flute solo, the piano rises from the low register of the flute and establishes its own flowing lines, preceding the entrance of the sung poetry. Sister Helen’s determination to rally others, “Until the chorus joins,” is emphasized by rising textures and dynamics, making way for the last section of the song. Titled Love, it is most powerfully defined by the final line of text: “Cultivate friendship with care: it is the best love of all.”


I catch on fire is a recounting of a memorable experience Sister Helen had while teaching a fourth-grade religion class. Her veil caught fire from a nearby candle, inspiring the line, “Sister! Sister! You’re on fire!” Heggie uses a light-hearted, swinging musical line in the piano and flute to set up the humorous lines. In his own notes, he recalls when Sister Helen first told him the story, and her laughter throughout. Despite the serious nature of her work and the intentionally introspective tones of each of the other poems, the inclusion of a light-hearted story illustrates Sister Helen’s relatability and humility. Though humorous, the line, “when I pray, I catch on fire” is used again in the last poem where it takes on a spiritual meaning, one of generosity and the desire of justice for others. 


The third poem, The Deepest Desire, contains Heggie’s most intense settings of Sister Helen’s words, directly addressing her work with the poor and her journey towards abolishing the death penalty around the world. During my interview with Heggie, he told me that “everyone has a flame, a fire in them that is their musical identity.” Sometimes it is the result of personal struggle, or the struggle of others. The Deepest Desire and Sister Helen’s repeated plea, “Come home! Come home! Come home!” is where her flame burns hottest, and Heggie tests the dynamic and intensity range of all three musicians, ending the song with the loudest, fastest moment of the piece.


In contrast, Primary Colors opens with a repeating melodic motive from the solo flute, meant to sound like a wooden Native American flute. The dynamic level and mood in each of the three parts is soft and solitary, representing Sister Helen’s trips to a Northern Cheyenne reservation where she takes time to write and meditate. Heggie includes the instruction, With utmost calm, using a repeated motif in the piano to help ground the piece. The flute and mezzo-soprano trade melodic lines, leading to a gentle decrescendo and the poem’s final line, “And when I put my head on the pillow, I fall instantly to sleep.”      

​
The Deepest Desire’s powerful message inspired me to look into Heggie’s other compositions for flute, Fury of Light and Soliloquy. As I studied each piece, I realized I was preparing to record something more than sound. These pieces were tangible, impactful stories of people who genuinely care about others. I’ve often struggled to justify my own career in music when other careers, on a surface level, directly contribute to society, such as paramedics or primary school teachers. Without diminishing the importance of any other career, I’ve come to realize that Heggie’s work gives me the opportunity to tell meaningful stories and use music as a medium of sharing the human experience.       

---

Fury of Light

First commissioned for renowned American flutist, Carol Wincenc, Fury of Light was premiered in 2009, then re-orchestrated as a concerto for the 2010 National Flute Association Convention. Based on Mary Oliver’s iconic poem, Sunrise, it is in four parts: Fast, Elegy, Meditation, and Very Fast. The piece begins with a single, sustained note in the flute before the piano enters with bright, flowing 16th notes several registers above. In contrast to The Deepest Desire, the music does not flow directly alongside the text, but reflects the overarching ideas of the poem and the feelings they evoke. The first movement can represent the brilliance of the sun and an “unforgettable fury of light,” through vast registral changes and short, bursting groups of sixteenth notes.

The second movement, Elegy, begins with a short introduction before giving way to one of Heggie’s most beautiful melodies. With simple harmonies and the instruction, pristine and with Baroque clarity, Heggie creates an aura of peace, reminiscent of Mary Oliver’s line, “What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us?”

Meditation, the most harmonically unstable of the four movements, begins with an extended piano solo, introducing a melody later repeated by the flute. The flute and piano function as a duet, trading slurred eighth-note lines through a variety of registers. Because of the harmonic ambiguity, the movement ends in uncertainty, mirroring Oliver’s question and statement: “What is my name? I am so many!”
​
The last movement, aptly titled Very Fast, presents an unrelenting version of the first movement’s melodic motive, but in 6/8 time instead of 2/2. The flute and piano perform in canon, often echoing each other’s lines one beat apart. A shadow of the second movement’s melody returns, providing the one instance of slowing tempo before a return of the opening material. A coda ends the piece on a strangely delicate, clipped motive, perhaps concluding as the poem does: “whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire.”

​

Mary Oliver

Carol Wincenc

Sunrise
Mary Oliver
 
You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People
 
have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound
 
to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But
 
this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought
 
of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun
 
blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises
 
under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?
 
What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it
 
whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

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Soliloquy for Flute and Piano

Soliloquy for Flute and Piano was commissioned by the Camerata Pacifica ensemble as a memorial piece for Suzanne Makuch, a patron and good friend of the ensemble’s director, Adrian Spence. Himself a flutist, Spence gave the premier alongside pianist Warren Jones in 2012. A setting of a song from the collection, Pieces of 9/11, Soliloquy begins with an instruction from Heggie: like a cry. As the piano plays clashing chords highlighting the dissonance of the major seventh, the flute begins an accented, tonally-shifting melody that gradually calms, leading to a gentle piano ostinato underneath a new melody.

Though there are lyrics in the original song, Soliloquy is presented as music alone. When I interviewed Heggie, he emphasized his desire for each performance to be about the music. In his compositions, it isn’t about the performer, or their ability, or even what they think about the piece. It’s about reaching out to the audience and inspiring them by communicating the meaning of the music. Soliloquy, even without the text of The Deepest Desire or Fury of Light, communicates both beauty and sadness, a reminder of ties between music and emotion.
 

"It's about reaching
​out to the audience and inspiring them"

​About the Artists

Claire McCahan
​
​Mezzo soprano

Mezzo soprano Claire McCahan has been praised for her “clear and warm tone” with “all the right colors”, and her “captivating stage presence.”  Her recent opera credits include Olga in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, the title role in Handel’s Ariodante, Third Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflote, and Prince Orlofsky in Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Eklund Opera), and a staged performance of Jake Heggie’s Camille Claudel: Into the Fire (Opera Steamboat).  Recent concert appearances include alto soloist with the Boulder Bach Festival in their February concert “From London with Love” under conductor Nicholas Carthy, Handel’s Messiah in Denver, CO under conductor Mathieu Lussier, Mozart’s Coronation Mass with the Rocky Mountain Chorale under conductor Jimmy Howe, Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Longmont Symphony, and Mozart’s Requiem with the CU-Boulder choruses and orchestra. She received the 2019 Frances MacEachron Award from the Lyndon Woodside Oratorio Solo Competition in New York, was a finalist in the 2017 and 2018 Denver Lyric Opera Guild Competition, a 2018 recipient of a Career Achievement Award from Opera of the Rockies. An advocate of new opera, she workshopped the role of Brittomara in Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer’s new collaboration If I Were You with the 2018 CU New Opera Workshop, and has been a performer of student compositions with the Pendulum New Music Series. Ms. McCahan resides in Boulder, CO where she is pursuing her Artist Diploma in Opera at the University of Colorado Boulder.

​Cecilia Lo-Chien Kao

Piano

Taiwanese pianist Cecilia Lo-Chien Kao enjoys performing in a wide variety of settings, ranging from chamber music, opera and orchestral ensembles, and choral music. She has collaborated with many distinguished artists including Lynn Harrell, Stefan Jackiw, Robert McDuffie, Bion Tsang, David Coucheron, Jennifer Stumm.

Ms. Kao has served as a collaborative pianist for the prestigious Meadowmount School of Music, Columbus State University and Mercer University, where she collaborated with students of the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings. She has also appeared at Carnegie Weill Hall and can be heard with cellist Bion Tsang on his album The Blue Rock Sessions. Ms. Kao has received fellowships for both the Aspen School of Music and Music Academy of the West and was a guest artist for the Amelia Island Chamber Music Festival in Florida.

She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, her Master of Music degree from the University of Texas at Austin and her Bachelor of Music degree from National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. Before moving to the States to pursue her passion for collaborative piano, she received the first Master of Arts degree in collaborative piano from National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei. Her teachers have included Anne Epperson, Margaret McDonald, Alexandra Nguyen, Elizabeth Pridgen and Shu-Cheng Lin. Kao is currently the Assistant Professor of Professional Practice and Collaborative Piano Artist at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.