from Raven Triptych, a collaboration by Kindred, Crabtree, and Herrington
for cello and orchestra
Woodland House is a movement from a larger work called Raven Triptych, which was a joint collaboration between three separate composers, Kyle Kindred, Brian Herrington, and myself, in which we each composed an orchestral movement (featuring solo cello – for our colleague, Daniel Sanz) honoring and inspired by the life of Sam Houston, an American soldier and politician (Senator and Governor), leader of the Texas Revolution, and first and third president of the Republic of Texas.
Each composer of this project chose a time period or event for inspiration of their movement, and for this last movement of the work, I decided to focus on Houston’s life in his later years.
After doing much research, and even visiting the Sam Houston museum in Huntsville, Texas, I was fascinated by the home he lived in during this time (1847-1859) with his wife, Margaret Moffette Lea. Houston’s family occupied the house until 1859, the period during which he served as a United States Senator, and as Governor of Texas. The home was nicknamed “Woodland House” and designed to resemble that of his boyhood home in Virginia.
I found the architecture of the house somewhat unusual (with a breezeway, chimneys, an outdoor kitchen, and winding stairs) and inspiring when thinking about what his life was like during this time. I thought Houston’s home life would be simple, calm, and reflective of all of his accomplishments – musically represented in this movement by a moderate tempo and a very lush texture with tonal harmonies. I also thought about some of the music that would exist at the time, and even toyed with the idea of quoting a melody or folk song melody from that period. However, and in order to have more control over the musical content, I decided to compose a sort of “folk melody” myself that would dominate the second half of the piece (and treated as a series of variations) that could represent Sam Houston’s legacy. Like the architecture of the house, the piece is organized into an A-B-A (ternary) form in which a return to the first part concludes the piece. Houston’s “Woodland House” is still on the museum grounds on the campus of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas where it continues to inspire my thoughts each time I pass by and see it.