Waiting for Daylight

full orchestral version
text by Anne Shelby
(1997) Duration: 25:00
PURCHASE

Premiere performance by Edith Davis Tidwell

Waiting for Daylight was commissioned by Meet the Composer for its Louisville Residency and is dedicated to soprano Edith Davis Tidwell. The text was written specifically for the composition by well-known Kentucky author and playwright, Anne Shelby, who worked closely with the composer in capturing their vision of this story. The writers are also thankful to Dr. Patricia Gagné, Professor of Sociology at the University of Louisville, who shared excerpts from her dissertation research, including interviews with women imprisoned for killing their abusers.

Waiting for Daylight is the story of such a woman and her abusive husband. Although this work is about spousal abuse, abuse is not limited to a spousal relationship, and may occur in any relationship in which power or control over another is misused with resultant damage or harm, whether or not it is deliberate or fully conscious.

In this story, the woman begins courtship full of dreams of a peaceful, happy life together with her "man with gentle hands." The general idea of this music, with its tolling low pedal points and rhythmically regular chordal writing, returns throughout the score, with each subsequent occurrence altered psychologically by the progressive distortions of the relationship. Even at the outset, her dream is suspect, as when the man says, "You are mine now. You belong to me." Before long her new husband begins to use physical force, and we witness the cyclical nature of the alternation of violence and apologies, violence and repentance. The violence is heard in the music with the repeated return of an aggressive music, with agitated strings, sinister woodwinds and brass, and angry percussion writing.

At the peak of the drama, the woman faces one of the most horrifying dilemmas imaginable: watch her husband beat and abuse her children or shoot him. Although she shoots him, it is not so much a conscious act as it is a blind, sudden reaction to the terror of the moment. Afterward, she is shocked and traumatized. In the final "scene" she sings from the prison, where she "wait(s) for daylight" and longs to be with her children again, "safe."

It must be clearly understood that the violent solution to abuse in this story is the worst possible choice, and in no way does anyone associated with this work condone violence. However, such situations do occur, and perhaps by acknowledging the worst, we will be persuaded to find more and better solutions, and to use more of our resources to promote and support those solutions that already exist.

Steve Rouse, 3/3/97