Nico Muhly

For Nine Male Voices And Orchestra-Luminous Body is a collaboration between Nico Muhly and Craig Lucas written in the period immediately following their narratively charged opera 'Two Boys'. Luminous Body is as a result abstract and poetic in gesture and form. The text interpolates among other things stylized versions of the teachings of Christ Buddha Mohammed and Plato; these are scrambled and re-contextualized and in a sense serve as background for the textures of the combination of nine male Voices and Orchestra.Part 1 introduces the chord structure that governs the entire piece and ends with the repeated words ?only your will is your own.?The second and third parts loosely dealing with the Devil and the importance of choosing one?s words are based on drones generated by the Voices and the strings; the constant (but slightly morphing) texture is meant to be meditative and vague. Muhly always wanted to set the Beatitudes and Craig paraphrased them beautifully here; the tenors intone the word ?blessed? over and over while the strings and winds reiterate the passacaglia from the opening of the piece. The fifth and final part is a series of proverbs. The Orchestra begins in a series of loose ecstatic drones which increase in intensity (?Make your own family!?) until you jump suddenly to the garden of Gethsemane where Christ was betrayed while his disciples slept. ?Why are you sleeping? Couldn?t you stay awake for one more hour?? he asks while the strings and winds lazily chant in the background.Luminous Body was premiered by The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Cantus.

Nico Muhly's Marrow composed for SATB choir unaccompanied with texts from Psalm 63 vv.1–3 6–8 Book of Common Prayer (1662). Commissioned by the Netherlands Chamber Choir for the project 150 Psalms to be premiered by the Tallis Scholars during Utrecht Early Music Festival September 1st 2017. Duration: c. 3 minutes. 'Last September in one weekend in Utrecht settings were sung of all 150 Psalms by 150 different composers covering 1000 years of choral music. The Tallis Scholars were one of the four choirs taking part and among their contributions was this new piece by Nico Muhly. The words are from the Book ofCommon Prayer version of Psalm 63 with the title teasingly taking one word from ‘My soul shall be satisfied even as it were with marrow and fatness.’ Cries of ‘O God’ provide a fluid background to an almost plainchant-like proclamation of the text at start and finish with other voices gradually joining the psalm text in the central section until all unite on ‘when my mouth praiseth thee with joyful lips’. For a choir happy to subdivide into 4S 2A 2T and 2B it is a setting of imagination and beauty.' - Sunday by Sunday

Nico Muhly's Fast Patterns for two Pianos adapted from the fourth movement of Patterns for solo organ. Commissioned by the London Piano Festival and premiered on 8th October 2016 at King's Place London by Charles Owen & Katya Apekisheva. Duration approximately: 5 minutes

Pater Noster simply meaning 'Our Father' has been composed by Nico Muhly for SATB Chorus With Soprano Solo and was originally commissioned for the 2008 Edington Music Festival.

Vocal Score-Nico Muhly's Let All The World In Every Corner Sing for SATB chorus Cello and Organ. Vocal Score.Let All The World In Every Corner Sing was commissioned by Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College Cambridge and first performed on 27 May 2014 by them with Peter Harrison Organ and Benjamin Michaels Cello.Rebecca Tavener in the March 2015 issue of Organist's Review states that Muhly 'has done more than merely set the text...it is an intriguing fresh response.'

Oculi Omnium is a work by Nico Muhly for Unaccompanied Men's Voices. It is a setting of Psalm 144:15 and was composed for the Clerks of Magdalen College Oxford. A full performance lasts around 2 minutes.

Vocal Score-Nico Muhly's Sentences for Countertenor and Chamber Orchestra. Composed: 2014 Duration: 30 minutes Composers Note: Sentences is a thirty-minute meditation in collaboration with Adam Gopnik on several episodes drawn from the life and work of Alan Turing. Turing lived in a sense many different lives but at the heart of his work was I think a very musical set of anxieties. Even the idea of code-breaking is inherently musical; the French for score-reading is déchiffrage: deciphering. His wartime work on the Enigma code translated later in life to a more nuanced relationship to code in the form ofa primitive but emotionally (and philosophically) complicated artificial intelligence. The piece uses a single voice not to speak necessarily as Turing but as a guide through these various episodes. I’ve always felt that the question of sentient computers is wildly emotional: we anthropomorphise the Mars Rover imagining its solitude on that dusty planet. Any act of communication in which the second person is unseen can be a one-way conversation. An email sent can never be returned — did it arrive or did it not? — or a text message can be delivered but never read. The thrill of a fast response is immediately tempered with the harsh but empty rudeness of an out-of-office reply. Anybody who has made a condolence phone call only to hear the voice of the deceased on the outgoing answering machine message knows the complexities of what could be a simple binary communication. 

Nico Muhly's In Great Numbers for unaccompanied SATB choir.  This work was commissioned by Wigmore Hall with the support of André Hoffmann president of the Foundation Hoffman a Swiss grant-making foundation. The premiere took place on the 14th October 2016 at Wigmore Hall where it was performed by 'The Cardinall's Musick' conducted by Andrew Carwood.

Whispered And Revealed is a setting of H. W. Longfellow's 'Snow-Flakes' by composer Nico Muhly. It is arranged for SATB Choir and Harp and this is the full score. The piece lasts approximately 3 and a half minutes. Nico Muhly himself states that the music of Whispered And Revealed reflects the delicacy of winter weather while the text and music hint at a certain anxiety. The piece was commissioned by Essential Voices USA and is dedicated to their conductor Judy Clurman and was composed in 2014.

Nico Muhly's All Our Works for unaccompanied SATB Choir.This piece incorporates words by Thomas Cranmer. It was commissioned by The Cardinall's Musick for their 25th Anniversary in 2014 with the support oftheir friends. The first performance took place on 26 July 2014 conducted by Andrew Carwood atWigmore Hall London.

Nico Muhly's Looking Up for SATB choir and Orchestra. Commissioned by the Cathedral Choral Society. Made possible by the William Remsen Strickland Endowment Fund 'to remember the concerts of the Cathedral Choral Society during World War II'. The first performance was given by the Cathedral Choral Society conducted by Patrick Dupre Quigley on 21 May 2017 at Washington National Cathedral Washington D.C. USA.

Nico Muhly's Old Bones is a setting of four texts three of which are the media's reaction to the discovery of the bones of Richard III in a Leicester car park the fourth is a poem in praise of the man who supposedly killed the king. Arranged for Countertenor Voice and Lute it was composed in 2013. According to Muhly Old Bones begins with a news report that is delivered as a recitative while the Lute parts go through a number of interesting patterns. The work sets two texts by Philippa Langley of the Richard III Society who in a series of interviews brought an emotion and passion to the rediscoveryof the bones that humanised the remains and brought the life and death of the king to the public's attention. It is therefore fitting that Old Bones ends with her words: 'Everyone else was looking at the old bones and I was seeing the man.'

Scored for Tenor and String Quartet Stranger was commissioned by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society with support from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage. The World Premiere was given by Nick Phan (tenor) and Brooklyn Rider at the Perelman Theater Kimmel Center Philadelphia on January 24 2020. Parts available: SRO100197-01

The Map Of The World is a work by Nico Muhly that sets three texts from Geoffrey Chaucer John Weever and Shakespeare for High Voice and Piano. The work lasts around 3 minutes 30 seconds.