Four Score

Year completed 2009
Medium Graphic Score (Paper) with Sound (MP3)
Dimensions 40 x 60

Four Score is a play on words, utilizing both Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and four graphic musical scores. Viewers are given MP3 players that contain four corresponding compositions and arrangements.

The Memphis sanitation worker strike happened because of discrimination and poor working conditions. 1,300 workers walked off the job on February 11, 1968. A sign that was used during that time stated: I AM A MAN. I updated a new version that includes the word “STILL.” “We Shall Overcome” is played backwards and forwards on the cello simultaneously.

This score is a graphic musical depiction that calls to mind the trees in the Southern part of the U.S. that were once used in lynchings.  I grew up in South Carolina, where many of these trees still stand. 

A solo cello plays “Come Thou Fount” layered over a rumbling choir of double basses. Things are crumbling below, as we look up.

This score employs the manipulated voice of Martin Luther King Jr., the text of Elizabeth Cady Stanton who wrote the Declaration of Sentiments for the Seneca Falls Convention (1848) on women’s suffrage that proclaimed, “All men and women are created equal,” and Abraham Lincoln’s text from the Gettysburg Address. The CODA in music signals the end of a movement.