Order Official Sheet Music
To purchase this sheet music edition, please email cdiyao@gmail.com with the link to this score. We will reply promptly with pricing, availability, and ordering details.
Email to PurchaseDeath
Official edition of "Death" by Tyshawn Sorey, published by Edition Peters (EP68790), scored for 女高中音, 钢琴. Edition includes 1 part, 12 pages.
- Composer
- Tyshawn Sorey
- Publisher
- Edition Peters
- Catalog No.
- EP68790
- Instrumentation
- 女高中音, 钢琴
- Instruments
- Specifications
- 1 parts · 12 pages (Single Score)
- Purchase Orders
- cdiyao@gmail.com (Email to Purchase)
Parts & Score Materials
| Part Name | Instrument | Pages |
|---|---|---|
| 女高中音, 钢琴 | VoiceFemale, Piano | 12 pages |
Work & Edition Details
Death by Tyshawn Sorey was commissioned by the L. A. Opera for a streaming premiere by mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms in February 2021, with pianist Howard Watkins. Its text, by the great Black poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, imagines just a glimmer of light dawning over a bleak, nightmarish landscape, haunted by death, which the composer explicitly connects to "the current conditions and precarity of Black life in America in the 20th and 21st centuries". (Dunbar himself died in 1906 at the age of 33). This slow and melancholy setting expands the poem into a five-minute lament.
This piano/vocal score includes the full text of the poem as well as a brief program note from the composer. Clarifying the racial contexts surrounding the piece, Sorey requests that the roles of both vocalist and pianist be played exclusively by Black American performers.
