"The presence of still water" (Piano Prelude No. 2)(2017) by Hayes Biggs published on 2017-05-18T02:52:31Z Thanks to Thomas Stumpf for commissioning this brief work, as well as my first prelude, “The secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal.” “The presence of still water” was inspired by Wendell Berry’s poem “The Peace of Wild Things.” Here are its first lines: “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.” These lines resonate even more deeply with me in these uncertain times, and the title of this prelude comes from Berry’s recalling of the still waters of the 23rd Psalm, a text that I still find comforting. The piece begins by evoking an anxious state of mind, and only gradually achieves a calmer, more placid one, as the rhythmic and harmonic structure becomes progressively simpler, just as meditative breathing eventually becomes deeper and slower. This performance was given on May 8, 2017 by Graham Goudeau, a student of Thomas Stumpf at Tufts University, on his senior recital. Here is a link to the complete poem: http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/berry/berry.html Genre Contemporary Classical