More Light

for trumpet and piano

(1995) Duration: 4:00

PURCHASE

Recording by Michael Tunnell (trumpet) and Meme Tunnell (piano)

More Light was written at the request of Michael and Meme Tunnell, to whom the work is dedicated. They premiered the work on March 14, 1995, at the Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. The request was for a piece that used, in some manner, Southern Baptist hymns or fragments.

More Light contains familiar fragments of more than a dozen traditional Southern Baptist hymns. Some of these fragments can be clearly heard at the surface of the music. Other hymn fragments are transformed and embedded in the structure so deeply that they are not likely to be recognized at all.

"More light" is also the phrase that the German polymath, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, is fabled to have uttered as his dying words, suggesting that perhaps he sought more enlightenment as he lay dying. Others have suggested that he simply wanted the shutters opened, an instance of the fable being more appealing, regardless of its accuracy.

– Steve Rouse