THE STORY BEHIND: Missy Mazzoli's "These Worlds In Us"

Title: These Worlds In Us

Composer: Missy Mazzoli (1980- )

Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: This is a RI Philharmonic Orchestra premiere. This piece is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, two trombones, tuba, percussion, harp and strings.

The Story: Missy Mazzoli, a composer with bona fide New England roots, has been called “a post-millennial Mozart.” Among the most innovative and successful composers of her generation, she began her music studies with Charles Fussell and John Harbison at Boston University, and then went on to Yale, where she further developed her craft with Aaron Jay Kernis and David Lang. Her works, often integrating acoustic and electronic instruments to create startling soundscapes, have been performed by major artists and ensembles around the globe.

Her first large-scale orchestral piece,  These Worlds In Us, was written for the Yale Philharmonia, and won her the ASCAP Young Composers Award. She takes the title from the poem  The Lost Pilot by James Tate, a first-person reflection on the death of the poet’s father in World War II. Mazzoli’s own father, to whom the piece is dedicated, was a soldier in the Vietnam War, and it was through conversations with him that she began to reflect on the worlds of intense memory we accumulate within us as we grow older, and how grief is often not far from joy.

Continuing in the composer’s own words:

"I like the idea that music can reflect painful and blissful sentiments in a single note or gesture, and I sought to create a sound palette that I hope is at once completely new and strangely familiar to the listener.

The theme of this work, a mournful line first played by the violins, collapses into glissandos almost immediately after it appears, giving the impression that the piece has been submerged under water or played on a turntable that is grinding to a halt. The melodicas (mouth organs) played by the percussionists in the opening and final gestures mimic the wheeze of a broken accordion, lending a particular vulnerability to the bookends of the work. The rhythmic structures and cyclical nature of the piece are inspired by the unique tension and logic of Balinese music, and the march-like figures in the percussion bring to mind the militaristic inspiration for the work as well as the relentless energy of electronica drumbeats."

Program Notes by Jamie Allen © 2025 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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