What is Man?

What is Man? was originally written for organ and choir. However, there is no organ in Brock Recital Hall (where my recital took place), so I had to work out something else. I threw together this brass arrangement more quickly than I should have and began to ask for over two and a half dozen of my friends to bail me out.

And guess what: they bailed me out.

I’m so grateful to have had amazing musicians on board for the performance. So, before I continue, I want to publicly thank everyone who performed on this piece. It was a chaotic journey coordinating the schedules of 30+ college students to achieve the most efficient rehearsals we could. As is often the case with these sorts of projects, we did not have a single rehearsal with everyone present. All of that said, each of these performers brought everything they could muster to the final performance, despite having their own recitals that weekend, opera performances, loaded class schedules, exams coming up, and all the other things that being a college student entails. So, to William, Will, Caleb, Caitlin, Asher, Sarah D., Savannah, Jackson, Tanner, James, Brandon, M.K., Sarah H., Leah, Abbey, Katherine, Bekah, Kristen, Kylee, Emily, O.G., Jimothy, Cole, Chris, Jacob, Bradyn, Graham, Bobby, Samuel, Reese, Alex, Ryan, and Matthew: thank you. Thank you so, so much. I was privileged to have your exceptional talents on display at my recital, presenting a piece that means so much to me.

Without further ado, below is the program note from my recital:

What is Man? is based on the biblical book of Job. Job, a “blameless and upright” man, has lost everything he ever had. In a matter of minutes, all the material possessions he has built up for himself vanish. Job (understandably) spends many chapters in immense grief, complaining to God, lamenting his birth, and eventually he asks God, “What is man, that you make so much of him, that you set your heart on him?”

“What is my strength, that I should wait? What is my end, that I should be patient? Is my strength stone? Or is my flesh bronze? God has shattered me.”

Essentially, Job has reached a point where he no longer understands his own existence, and furthermore, why God would even care for his existence. If Job is so small and insignificant that everything he has can be taken away in the blink of an eye, why would God want anything to do with him? After all, God is the omnipotent, omniscient, eternal Creator of the entire universe. He created oceans, mountains, comets, stars… He “laid the foundations of the earth” (Job 38:4) and everything in and around it. What could God possibly want with Job?

Now, Job doesn’t say this in the book, but for the sake of this piece of music, I thought it was important for God’s rhetorical question, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” to be stated from Job’s perspective: “Where was I, when the earth’s foundations were laid?”

When Job asks this, he has caught God’s attention. You’ll hear the clarinets take a high descending figure, and the brass will slowly build, announcing the impending presence of Elohim. The choir, acting as a cloud of angels proclaiming the advent, sing, “Who shall dare contend with God, the Lord Almighty? He who dares contend with God, let him be questioned” (40:2, paraphrased). God is coming, and He is announcing His entrance with a mantra to let Job know that questioning the Creator of the universe is not something to be taken lightly. “Who shall dare contend with God?”

Finally, God has arrived, and Job humbles himself. He’s done complaining, he’s done questioning, he’s ready to listen. “Behold, I am of small account,” he says. “I lay my hand upon my mouth” (40:4). Another instrumental build-up leads us to God’s first words of the piece; and they are the same words that Job began with. What is man? What is man?

God doesn’t take Job’s questions one by one and provide a logical answer for each. Of course not. Instead, God debases the entire foundation on which Job built those questions by turning the very thing Job asked of God back around on him. Where were you, o man, when the earth’s foundations were laid? 

Job says “Who am I?” and God says, “Who are you to even ask?”

While God is willing to let Job ask whatever questions he wants, he isn’t interested in justifying himself to Job. He’s more concerned with planting deep inside Job’s heart the fact that Job is a man, and God is God. Job need not trouble himself with asking God’s motives. To ask God what He could possibly want to do with you is to miss the point.

Where were you... when the sea burst from the womb? Have the gates of death been opened unto you? Can you comprehend the earth? Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Have you the strength of God?

What is man?

What is Man? was originally written for organ and choir. However, there is no organ in Brock Recital Hall (where my recital took place), so I had to work out something else. I threw together this brass arrangement and am so grateful to have had amazing musicians on board for the performance.

There were numerous obstacles in the preparation of What is Man? for my recital. Due to the nature of student schedules, there were a great many people who had to retract their commitment to the piece (to be clear, I hold nothing against them). I had to scramble to find new singers to fill their spots, move singers from one voice to another (sorry, Katherine and Bekah), and the like. The scheduling itself was a nightmare, too. It wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if I had made the piece a cappella, but trying to coordinate between the schedules of instrumentalists and those of vocalists is not an easy thing to do.

As the recital got closer and we had a couple rehearsals in Brock with most of the performers there, it became clear that we would have to jump through all kinds of hoops to make sure the choir could even be heard. Twelve brass and woodwind instruments playing at ff quickly overpower twenty singers. Matthew suggested miking the choir (an excellent idea), but I stubbornly refused. We thought about putting the instrumentalists in the catwalk of Brock (coolest idea ever), but Matt Watson quickly shot that down. Someone threw out the idea of putting the singers in the side aisles, but conducting that would have been absurdly difficult. In the end, we did what was probably the least effective of all the possibilities: we brought the choir as far downstage as we could, and pushed the brass as far upstage as we could. It did make a big difference, but as you can tell by listening to the recording, it wasn’t quite big enough. Still, all things considered, I am very pleased with the final result.

When I wrote What is Man?, I was becoming increasingly aware of both my own feeble nature and the immense presence and power of a divine…something. I struggled with many of the same questions Job does in the Bible; if God is who I believe him to be, why is he concerned with me? I knew I wanted to convey the power of God, no matter how underdeveloped my understanding of it, and the best way to do that seemed to be with strong, thunderous chords and voicing. I knew I wanted to convey the relative weakness of men, and I chose text that I think does that well. And, as I was in a time of my life where I was asking some serious and terrifying questions of God, I knew I wanted to convey just how frightening it was to go through that process, seemingly in opposition to and protest of that “Divine Something” whose unfathomable strength I was beginning to recognize.

Having been led out of that period of my life (and into a new one with its own challenges), I can look back and stand confidently on the ground that God was guiding me through it. At the time, it was hard to believe I was being watched over by anyone or anything, on a cosmic or human level. Because of this, there is an internal conflict hidden in this piece that even I did not recognize until late in the rehearsal process. To some degree, I had spent my life believing I was not allowed to ask questions of God or intellectually challenge his power, fundamental goodness, and authority over my life. I do not think that is what I was taught. Instead, I was taught that to ask those questions was pointless, because of the “obvious” truth of the Bible and Christian teachings. The conflict, therefore, arose as I became deeply dissatisfied with my shallow understanding of God, but felt enormous guilt at the prospect of anything that smelled of “doubt.”

I do believe that, on some level, it is “pointless” to ask those questions. And I do believe that is part of what God says to Job: “Where were you when I did all these things?” God unquestionably has the power. At the same time, there is a crucial phrase in the book: “In all this, Job did not sin.”

It may be “pointless” to ask these questions, because the answers are obvious (see Romans 1:19-20). Pointless or not, however, we have every right to ask them, and God is ready to answer them emphatically when we do.

Below is a note from Matthew Grauberger, who conducted the work at its premiere in my recital. Matthew’s note is both complimentary and critical, and it was this balance of his that I appreciated greatly in the process of realizing this piece, in addition to the huge amount of work he put into understanding What is Man? and transforming the performance of my composition into a genuinely meaningful experience for me (and, I hope, for others).

Note from conductor Matthew Grauberger, MMCM:

I was honored when W. F. Smith Leithart asked if I would conduct What Is Man?. The piece is a contemporary work for SATB choir and a brass double quintet. The double quintet calls for clarinets, horns, trumpets, trombones, and tubas. The addition of clarinets is particular unique. Additionally, pairing these instruments with a choir apart from large orchestral or symphonic work is unusual. Given the proper performance space and arrangement of performers, this combination can be particularly effective. However, without such considerations, this combination of instruments and performers presents challenges.

The piece is a work of epic proportions that feels as large as the questions that loom throughout the book of Job. Is God good? Is God loving or vengeful? Does God have his peoples’ best interest in mind? What must have Job thought about the nature of God? What is man? The book of Job traverses a number of scenarios, stories, and questions, which is represented by the variety of textures, meters, instrumentation, and aural qualities found throughout the work. This proved to be challenging. The performers were not used to working in these unique pairings and combinations. Each section, though usually connected by a transitional passage, called for different emphases and melodic and harmonic priorities. It also proves challenging for the conductor. As a choral conductor, I found myself studying symphonic conductors to look more symphonic during these portions of the piece.

Ultimately, the work’s existential open-endedness is well constructed aurally. The piece, though long, has the ability to leave the listener wondering about the existence of God, music, and man. As choral conductor, I was particularly impressed with the a cappella choral writing beginning in 127. There is a lush richness of dissonant and consonant chords that play on the tension of the questions being asked and relief when an answer does finally arrive. It also portrays that God is not a purely consonant figure and the man is purely a dissonant one. Consonance is not always peaceful nor is dissonance always evil. Leithart has the ability to write a well-crafted theme and expound upon the subject. He does this with the opening theme as well as secondary themes found in measures 14 in the voices, 34 in the horns, and 63 in the trombones. These themes are powerful statements, indicative of a powerful God, powerful evil, and the powerful nature of man, God’s creation. Leithart also plays with using walls of homophonic sound and the individual lines of polyphonic sounds that continuously layer on after each other, producing waves of sound that grow in intensity and vigor.

My only regret is not pushing the performers, particularly the choir, more to garner a performance that does justice to this quality work. Though the choral writing is exemplary, the choir had a tendency to over-sing in an effort to match the volume output of the brass, which diminished tone quality and intonation. An organ reduction, an alternate instrumental voicing, or properly designed performance space specifically arranged with this piece in mind would eliminate these issues. This piece is once again, an epic work, depicting an epic tale. Leithart’s desire to stretch the possibilities of the instrument and voice are justified in such a work.

If you’d like to purchase the score and/or parts for What is Man?, please contact me for rates.