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Go on child | COMPOSER Q&A | COMPOSER BIO
Y’all, this is a special one for me this week. I’m not quite sure where to begin.
Last year, I was approached by a composer named Harry Castle about setting my poem, “Go on child,” for choir. Little did I know when I gave my approval what an emotional journey this piece would take me on. Here you have an audio recording of its premiere: The University of Michigan’s esteemed Chamber Choir, conducted by Eugene Rogers at Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. I am so excited to be able to invite you to listen.
I took my son for a walk when he was maybe two months old, strapped close to my body, just me and him. On our way home I found the way blocked by what was essentially a field made of mud. I looked everywhere for a way around and quickly discovered that my way home was either back or through. While I stood there deliberating, the earth said to me, “What’s wrong with mud?” I was immediately blessed by the question. I realized in that moment how much I hope my child will love the earth enough to cover his body in it, and it was with a surprising joy I trudged through, ankle deep in thick, sticky, smoochy mud. As soon as I got home, I sat and wrote this poem in its entirety:
Go on child,
Be earth-kissed.
Go feel the rain in the dirt
with your palms.
Go barefoot in the morning so
even your toes turn to honey
with light.
Cover yourself in the mire
and carry your mud body
back to my door
where I will say,
come in boy, show us
where you’ve been.
Track your earth-joy up the stairs,
through the kitchen,
tile the floors with it, with proof
you have met the day
and loved her.
Spend your life wearing this
delight, fill your belly with it.
Then come home and sing it to us,
for too often we forget
just how much we were made to live
in this mucky mortal world.
While I am proud of this poem and think it speaks well for itself, what Harry has done with this piece is imbue it with a kind of life I could not alone have done. When I first heard his demo, I wept. When I heard it performed by U-M’s Chamber Choir, I wept. When I read Harry’s answers to my questions below, I wept. Never have I had my words treated with such deep care, understanding, and imagination. That Harry wanted to use my poem to create such magic is the privilege of a lifetime. I say that without any hyperbole.
I hope you will take some time to listen to the recording, to read through our conversation—there is so much art to be appreciated here. Thoughtfulness, creativity, freedom, beauty. I learned about my own writing seeing it (and hearing it) from Harry’s perspective. I hope there might be something here you’ll enjoy receiving today too.
Happy listening.
-t
Q&A with Harry Castle
Q: Hi Harry! For readers who haven’t met you yet, would you mind doing a bit of an introduction? One that goes beyond a bio sketch… Who are you? What do you do? Why do you do it? What parts of who you are inform the way you come to music? (I hope these questions make sense!)
Hello! I'm Harry Castle, and I'm a composer, singer and music director from the United Kingdom. I've been in the US for five years this year as I put myself through grad school -- currently I'm a doctoral candidate in music composition at the University of Michigan. I spend a significant amount of my time writing music for a range of different kinds of ensembles and performance traditions. Some things I've enjoyed writing recently include a chamber piece about a sea marble that combines contemporary bassoon writing with electronica, an hour-long musical theatre song cycle that dramatises moments in the lives of queer twenty-somethings, and a choral piece about motherhood that sets the wonderful poetry of a Michigan-based poet whom I think you all know!
I think that the best pieces of music and drama hold space for us to ask questions about ourselves.
My academic research is all about groove—how and why we move to music—and a good portion of my composition work feeds into/off the things I know or suspect to be true about groove. But above all, I love telling stories through music. I acted in plays and musicals all throughout my childhood and teenage years, and while I never seriously saw myself up on stage as a career, this experience convinced me that the combination of character, text and music can serve as a proxy for our own human experiences. I think that the best pieces of music and drama hold space for us to ask questions about ourselves, whether they are upbeat and quirky or steady and contemplative. They don't always have to have text attached to them in order to tell a story, but as a singer myself I find a lot of joy in working with texts that speak to me and help me to convey something in the music.
Q: When you originally reached out to me about setting “Go on child” for choir, you said you were “looking for poems that encapsulate aspects of motherhood that don’t often receive the spotlight.” I don’t know exactly how to ask this question, particularly as neither of us comes to the idea of gender as a binary, but it’s also very rare that people have expressed interest in this poem (and more broadly in motherhood) who aren’t mothers themselves. What draws you to this theme?
I mean, some important context is that I'm queer, and as many of us in the community know, family is as often found as it is given. Mothers exist in all kinds of ways: of course, many people have mothers in the women that gave birth to them, but not all folks who give birth are women, so the word "mother" looks different for them. And mothers are rarely mothers simply by virtue of having given birth. The verb "to mother" can be used as an expression of deep care and affection for someone as they learn—be that how to walk, how to dress, how to love, how to come out, how to deal with failure. Queer folks have long used "mother" as a word to describe their community elders, men who fought their fights generations before and who have wisdom to impart. We use "mother" to describe drag queens and ballroom artists who take younger performers under their wing, into their "house" and into their "family". We also use "mother" to describe our divas and heros, usually cis, straight women who maybe speak out in support of queer and trans folks, or maybe project a kind of confidence and power that we love. All of these kinds of mothers play an integral role in raising queer youth, and especially so for those who are rejected by their birth mothers and families because of their queerness.
The verb "to mother" can be used as an expression of deep care and affection for someone as they learn
I know that the point of view from which you wrote "Go on child" is one of a cis, queer woman watching the child that she gave birth to grow, which is not a perspective that I currently or will likely ever have. But the way that you phrase your hopes and desires for this child are so rooted in a wish that he learns to love the messy, the imperfect, the inconsistent, that he learns to dig in instead of pull away, and that wading through the mud is much better than trying to avoid it. One of the reasons I believe that chosen family is so important to queer folks is that our birth families do not always encourage these ideas when it comes to our identity and sexuality, whereas our chosen families do. In the poem, towards the end, the child becomes the mother, and in a way, the words you have written are mother in and of themselves. You wrote them in the second person, which means that they are speaking directly to the reader. These are the words and ideas that I want to hear from my families, from those who are mother to me. And now, as I grow older and somehow, mind-blowingly, become a role model and mother to my peers and students, these are words and ideas that I want them to hear from me as well.
Q: I imagine choral music might have a reputation of being a bit formal or drab or inaccessible to some readers… for those who are new to the genre, or for those who might be interested in having a new kind of listening experience when it comes to choral music, what advice would you give? What is important to listen for, and how can a person develop a deeper appreciation for the art form?
I'm not going to lie here—there is a lot of quite formal/drab/inaccessible choral music out there. But there is also a lot of gripping and powerful choral music out there too! My best piece of advice is always to listen for the text. If you can't hear the text well in a recording, try to find a written copy of it that you can follow along with. A lot of choral music makes a lot more sense if you know what the words are. My second best piece of advice is to seek out composers who are from marginalised backgrounds. In my opinion, too much of the choral repertoire is stuck on boring cis straight white guy music—it's not a binary issue, of course, but if you start to view choral music as a vehicle for exploring new perspectives, you will most likely find music that resonates more deeply with you. I personally love many pieces of choral music from across the gamut of white guy musical history, as well as many others that do not fall into this category, but if you've been turned off the genre by these kinds of "standard repertoire" works, then taking this advice will probably open things up a bit for you.
A lot of choral music makes a lot more sense if you know what the words are.
Q: Now let’s talk about "Go on child." Every time I listen (which is often), I hear something different. I hear tenderness, tension, delight. There’s also movement. Contrast between, for instance, the early, soft blessing of “Go barefoot in the morning so / Even your toes turn to honey / With light,” the urgency in the charge to “Tile the floor with it, with proof / You have met the day / And loved her,” the palpable joy in “and sing it to us.” Talk us through the structure of this piece, and your choices as a composer.
The piece is in two parts, because I felt that the poem was essentially in two parts as well. From the beginning up until "and loved her", the instruction to the child is physical—"go feel the rain", "go barefoot", "cover yourself in the mire" etc.—but after that point, the instruction is ideological—"take what I have taught you and remind everyone else just how important this is," to paraphrase. We begin with a refrain "Go on child, be earth-kissed." This comes back many times during the piece, and I use a different chord on many of the iterations of the word "kissed." I chose to do it this way because I feel like the rest of the poem is encapsulated within the word "earth-kissed"—this is not a word that we say often, if at all, but I feel that the way you have set everything up means that the central wisdom to be passed down to (and eventually by) the child is contained in the permission to be "earth-kissed." So, using the same notes and rhythms for the first part of the refrain lets us know that we are grounded and know this advice, but then using different chords to move through that final word makes each time it comes feel simultaneously like a new door, as if the act of repeating this refrain as a mantra or affirmation allows us to approach each new day with this in mind.
The central wisdom to be passed down to (and eventually by) the child is contained in the permission to be "earth-kissed."
It was important to me that the words flow in close to a speech pattern. Because you have written in the second person, I needed the audience to actually hear the text as advice they are being given in the moment. That's why in the sheet music for the piece, the meter of the music changes frequently—in the listening act you can probably perceive this as a sense of push and pull in the flow of the music. I tried to give each new instruction (as I highlighted above) a new energy, and this energy broadly-speaking increases towards the section with the words "Tile the floor with it." The idea of wanting muddy footprints all over your floor as "proof" that a kid went out and had a good time really makes me smile, and so that's where the big build of the piece comes, leading up to "and loved her." That line needed to be repeated, as those who mother know well—once strongly and emphatically to remind us that it is important, and once gently to make sure that we remember it is said with love.
Then we come back to the refrain, to lead us into the second part of the poem, the bit which is instruction for the future. I used the same musical material to set much of this, just changing the exact rhythms to make sure that the text still flows as speech. The music is different after "Fill your belly with it"—the exhortation to "sing" is nothing particularly fancy compositionally-speaking, I just used that word as an opportunity to have the choir really "sing" for the first time (as opposed to the "speaking" that they've been doing the rest of the piece). But it definitely has an effect of release and letting go, since we haven't heard this kind of texture in the piece thus far. That's probably where the joy comes from here that you noted above. And then we get to the end. For me, "mucky" and "mortal" are the two most special words in the piece—the alliteration is lovely, and it feels so perfect for you to have thrown in the idea that life is a fleeting mess right at the end, as if it's some kind of premonition of a moral to a cautionary tale. Of course, I had to end the piece with the refrain from the opening again, since it is so forward-looking, and I think leaves the audience with that central wisdom ringing in their ears as they go on.
Q: When did you know this composition was done? Was there a moment that you sat back and felt it was complete? What is that experience like for you as a composer?
I wrote the first draft of this piece without any of the rhythms fixed or planned out, and just let my feel and embodied understanding of the text guide my thoughts. It's important for me to feel how the words exist in music in the first instance, before I get too bogged down in the nitty-gritty of the music. Then I went back and spent time making sure that the scansion would work, deciding on the exact pitches that would go in every chord, and figuring out how the chords would be voiced between the parts. I did not know how many voice parts the choir would need to be divided into until that stage of the process (it was in essentially 6 parts in the end). Then I zoomed out, to see if the long-range arc of the music made sense. I really believe that this can make or break a piece of music—if you stay too long in one place or skip over something that deserves more space, you risk losing the attention of the audience. Once I was happy with that, I made a demo recording of the piece, to help me know what the dynamic (volume) markings should be, and to put all the timings and intervals between notes into my voice. Sometimes you find that you have made things unnecessarily awkward for certain voice parts, and this is a great chance to codify what changes you can make to improve the experience for the performers. This bit of the process is where I'm really grateful for my extensive experience singing choral music, because it means I don't have to find other people to send the piece off to so they can workshop it for me. Sometimes that is something that you get to do anyway, if you are writing for a specific ensemble, but it's really helpful that I can do a lot of that fact-finding work for myself. Only after I'm certain that it works well for the singers do I feel like the piece is done. With "Go on child," that was a really satisfying feeling, because this was a piece that I was writing primarily for myself, rather than to commission for somebody else!
Q: Is there anything else you’d like listeners to know as they hear this piece for the first time?
The recording that we have of this piece is by the University of Michigan Chamber Choir, conducted by Eugene Rogers. I was lucky to get to work with Eugene and the choir on this—the piece won the Brehm Prize for Choral Composition in 2022, and the choir sang it at a concert this past February in the wonderful Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor. I really hope that you enjoy listening to it!
About the Composer
HARRY CASTLE is a British composer, tenor, and musical director, currently studying for a DMA in composition at U-M with Roshanne Etezady and Kristin Kuster. He works at the intersection of contemporary classical, pop, jazz and musical theatre genres, and writes music as frequently at home in concert halls as it is in bars. Harry is particularly drawn to musical storytelling, and as an LGBTQ+ creative he is especially interested in telling stories that center queer and marginalized narratives.
Prior to moving to Michigan, Harry graduated with a BA in Music from Clare College, University of Cambridge (studying composition with Richard Causton), and an MA in Composition, Theory and Musical Theatre Writing from Yale University (studying with Kathryn Alexander, Konrad Kaczmarek, Jeanine Tesori & Scott Frankel), staying on for a year as a Research Scholar studying groove. Harry’s music has been heard at the BBC Proms, The New World Symphony, the Rhode Island International Film Festival, the National Centre for Early Music and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and has been performed by Eleni Katz, the University of Michigan Chamber Choir, the Marea Duo, the Albatross Duo, Margaret Lancaster, the Yale Symphony Orchestra, the Da Capo Chamber Players, the English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble, and chamber ensembles of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Aurora Orchestra. Awards include: U-M Brehm Prize for Choral Composition, Made at the Red House Residency (Wild Plum Arts/Britten-Pears Foundation), Zodiac International Music Competition (Finalist), BBC Proms Young Composer of the Year, National Centre for Early Music Young Composers’ Award (Finalist), Clare College Carol Competition, Outstanding Arrangement Award (International Competition of Collegiate A Cappella), Paul Mellon Fellowship (Yale University). Harry’s music is published in the Kurt Weill Foundation’s Lotte Lenya Songbook, and by Murphy Music Press.
You can find out more about Harry and his work by visiting his website:
Instagram: @harrycastlesounds
When my poem became music | LISTEN