Family Recipe for Biscuits

2012
/
Vocal

Details

Category

Vocal

instrumentation

Soprano & Double Bass

duration

12'

commissioned by

premiered by

Maggie Hasspacher, voice & double bass

Purchase Score

When I met with Sarah and Maggie about collaborating on a piece, we discussed themes and ideas that resonated with us personally. Two themes that kept popping up? Family and food.

The resulting text, Family Recipe for Biscuits, is a poem that is divided into four sections, each conveying a distinct point of view and experience. The first, 1942, tells the story of the recipe's creation, born from the distractions of a worried, expectant mother. The narrator in "1963" is the grown daughter of the woman in 1942; she's using her mother's recipe to impress a suitor and display her domestic prowess. In 1971, that suitor is now a husband and father, left to cook for the children one night when the wife is away. The recipe requires more from him than he expected, but so do his children. The fourth section, 2010, offers the narrator an opportunity for independence, especially in a busy world full of pre-fabricated goods. Each narrator links the recipe to a personal fear or failure, but the recipe itself-and the resulting biscuits-are a source of comfort and pride. Who wouldn't want a set of instructions in a world that often feels uncontrollable?

-Aaron Fullerton