“It is the Sixth Extinction.”

What an evocative, expansive way to begin. These are the literal first words of the libretto of White Raven Black Dove, the first words I read back in 2018 when Cerise and I began work on this piece (ah, the innocence of the before-times: before a global pandemic, before the sociopolitical upheavals that have since made this fictional universe ever more present and telling). It is these words that initially drew me to the Onyxs and Silvers, with their embryonic suits and talking creator birds, their ritualized sacrifice, their prejudices and warmongering, their intrigues and denials. Their longing for the beauty, simplicity, and harmony of times long gone. These words are the kernel that expanded ever outward into the opera you are about to watch. How does humanity rebuild after global extinction—not the first, nor the second, nor even the third. The sixth! And what does that sound like.

Rich, nuanced, specific environments are what draw me to compose for opera and theater—to build universes through music, to narrate stories with the spoken word, the sung word, and the sounds beyond words themselves.

And so.

It is the Sixth Extinction and we are in a world of contrasts: an underground, steampunk society devoid of light whose perpetual darkness covers an intricate and precarious system of electricity, irrigation, and mining, and an aboveground desert society of perpetually harsh sunlight, unfiltered radiation, and acid rain. Two societies barely surviving, two societies in fierce opposition, and two societies who have created their own individual mythologies of how to return to the “dream of times long gone” (again, ever more present, telling).

Here already are our musical landscapes—namely a modernist, crunchy core (sometimes serialized, sometimes freely atonal) to highlight the mechanical, harsh, unforgiving worlds of the Silvers and Onyxs, said core undergirded by Neo-Classical and Neo-Romantic nods to structure and tonality (it is the sixth extinction, after all; our musical pendulum will have swung from Bach through Berlioz to Berg and back again several times over) and threaded through with traditional folk melodies and popular music (cf. Anne Washburn and Michael Friedman’s Mr. Burns; a post-electric play for how the popular becomes mythic). These juxtapositions, of the stridently angular and the quietly pastoral, the industrially complex and the peacefully straightforward, are the musical heart of White Raven Black Dove.

They are also reflected in the orchestration. The traditional—flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, brass, strings, piano—encounters the popular in saxophones and acoustic guitar, and breaks open yet further through the crackling shrieks and distortion of electric guitar/pedalboard and programmed electronic music/electronic percussion.

For those looking for specific themes to follow, pay close attention to the Prologue. Out of the many motifs of the piece, the following three ideas form the main motivic structures of the opera:

1. The opening four notes (B-C, then down to E-F) outline the harmonic battle that will occupy the rest of the music, that of E5/E major vs F5/F major. This crunchy thesis statement reflects the seemingly irreconcilable battle between the Onyxs below and the Silvers above, with seconds (and by inversion sevenths) underpinning nearly all of the harmonic and melodic moves of the opera; that is, at least until we hopefully do reconcile to a more consonant relation by the end of the story. This E major vs F major battle features perhaps most prominently in Raven’s “White Raven Aria” in Act I.
2. The “pentatonic ease” of 200,000 years ago, with its gently ebbing and flowing rhythms and folk/world melodies (see how many themes you can catch; they range from God Save the Queen, to the Kookaburra song, to South Asian and Eastern Slavic folk tunes and anthems, indigenous American melodies, and most everything in between.)
3. The Song of Saltwater, a poignant Romantic remembrance of the times that came before, but that have now been washed away by the tears of our pain and nostalgia.

Ultimately, I hope that the music of White Raven Black Dove tells the same story as the words of its libretto: that of a world in disrepair working to rebuild itself, of a people whose outer differences mask the deeply human and universal core within all. It is the Sixth Extinction, yes, but with Raven and Dove, Kora and Peristeri, Pano and the Elders—let us “create a new world.”

Special thanks to friend and fellow composer Andrew Jackson Lynch, whose work within Act II proved invaluable  to the creation (and completion) of this work.