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Under the city
instrumentation: SSAA voices w / divisi and body percussion, piano
year composed: 2025 | 5 minutes
“Under the city” was composed for the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus in the winter of 2024-25 for the final round of their annual Competition for Young Composers. It won first prize. Inspired by a recent visit to New York City, I wrote and set a text about the city’s subway—a place which I find especially charming since I’ve never lived in a city with one. The subway offers a unique sonic experience, one that’s both invigorating and soothing.
Musically, my goal was to extract the essence of the subway’s sounds, rather than fully imitate them. Though, I borrow the familiar C-sharp to A “ding dong” of the closing doors and imitate the clicking of the tracks with the singers’ tapping of their sides. The chorus sings “ooh”s and “ah”s, providing the subway’s ambient noise, while a soprano soloist continues the poem’s text. I’ve used quartal harmonies and modal mixture to build anticipation of the piece’s climax, which helps reframe the opening piano motif as the piece ends.
I was inspired by William Carlos Williams’ poem “To a poor old woman.” The woman in “Under the city,” like the woman in Williams' poem, finds meaning in the smallness of everyday life. Her experience of riding the subway “feels good to her,” as it did when she was a young girl.
Under the city
—after William Carlos Williams
text by Courage Barda
Under the city,
an old woman sits
in a crowded subway car.
The doors shut,
the train leaves, and
she closes her eyes
to remember
the little girl
who sat there years ago
on her way to school.
Suddenly, she is six.
She’s there, on the subway, for
the very first time—
her tennis shoes
swinging and kicking
a foot above the floor,
her freckled face
watching and smiling at
the men in hats and suits.
Then, the doors shut,
the train left,
and her body was
cradled by the rhythms
of the metro sound.
The train whirred,
and whistled. It
clicked and clanged and
rattled and rang; it
screamed and sang; it
nagged and neighed —
it roared!
The woman smiles.
A steady hum surrounds her.
Her grocery bag
sways between her knees.
Under the city,
and old woman sits
in a crowded subway car.
And it feels good to her,
it felt good.
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