INSPIRATION: AT THE GOLDEN GATE OF SONG 
Program notes for the Cincinnati May Festival by Howard Helvey, composer

How grateful I was for the opportunity to create a choral work to help celebrate the new partnership between the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus, May Festival Youth Chorus and Boychoir. Having long admired the writing of Paul Laurence Dunbar (born in Dayton, Ohio), I was delighted that his poem “Inspiration” ultimately aligned with the commission occasion and parameters. 

First appearing in Dunbar’s 1903 poetry collection, Lyrics of Love and Laughter, “Inspiration” initially places the speaker in a state of rejection — even by an Angel! Written in first-person, and employing mostly short, clear words, the concise poem almost certainly reflects racial discrimination and the inequality of artistic opportunity present during Dunbar’s time. The “golden gate of song” very well might represent the barriers in place limiting the education, expression and recognition of many Black artists. To counter and defeat oppression, Liberation gradually and softly enters the scene — embodied as Love. Gates fly open, sadness and pain vanish and full freedom is granted. The final line — questioning the permanence of the revealed Liberation — implies perhaps a reminder that freedoms can also be taken away. But it could also indicate the speaker’s literal request of Love, such as: “will the gates be shut behind me so that I no longer live in an environment of oppression?”

My creative process varies from piece to piece, but it was a joy to begin the journey for Inspiration during a week-long November 2024 writing retreat spent in a remote cabin in the Red River Gorge area of Kentucky. It was indeed an inspiring place! With my laptop computer and a small digital piano, I created a little makeshift workstation near a window overlooking a dense, quiet forest and rolling hills of the Bluegrass State. Perhaps a little old-fashioned, but I still appreciate the drafting of compositional ideas with staff paper and pencil, so those items were always at my side — as was our gregarious and active Siberian Husky, Nadia (Boulanger).

The musical form of this new work is roughly ABA, with extended time and emphasis placed during Love’s arrival. From the first measures, motifs in the piano part consist of ascending and accumulating textures vacillating between simple (two equal parts) and compound (three equal parts) divisions of the metrical pulse. These gestures quickly infuse the choral statements as well, and become a unifying element throughout.

I have long admired repertoire for four-hand piano and two pianos. The genre ended up being a concentration of mine during my MM piano degree, and I concertized 1997–2012 with Richard Steinbach as half of a classical piano duo team. So it was a pleasure to have the request to include four-hand piano for this May Festival commission. The work’s moments of upper-end dynamics — especially with the great number of voices involved — are energetically supported by the piano’s expanded, nearly orchestral, compass and textures possible with 20 fingers instead of 10.

INSPIRATION: AT THE GOLDEN GATE OF SONG by Howard Helvey
Text: Paul Laurence Dunbar

At the golden gate of song
Stood I, knocking all day long,
But the Angel, calm and cold,
Still refused and bade me, “Hold.”

Then a breath of soft perfume,
Then a light within the gloom;
Thou, Love, camest to my side,
And the gates flew open wide.

Long I dwelt in this domain,
Knew no sorrow, grief, or pain;
Now you bid me forth and free,
Will you shut these gates on me?