Psalm of Unknowing (2022) for contralto and countertenor

I wrote Psalm of Unknowing to ease my impatience with my lifelong questioning. While consumed with doubt, I stumbled upon an article by author and poet Devin Kelly. Kelly states that grace is dependent on our uncertainty. In this way, it is questioning that opens us to possibility: “To not know, and admit your not-knowing-ness, is a kind of wonder.” After reading Kelly’s piece, I recalled a quote from the fourth of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet—“have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves” (tr. A. S. Kline). These ideas became the basis for the text and music for Psalm of Unknowing. Exploring the strange curiosity in the text, the vocalists meditate on pitches, sometimes together in a recited manner and sometimes more fluidly like a river.

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This piece was written for the UMKC Musica Nova, “Return Flight” program (May 5, 2022) as an homage to György Ligeti’s Musica Ricercata. Psalm of Unknowing draws pitch content from movements four and five of Ligeti’s work.