Le Chemin de Salut

for soprano and chamber ensemble (2008)

Le Chemin de Salut (The Way of Salvation) reflects on the promise, difficulties, and ultimate tragedy that accompanied the sudden and violent subsumption of the western Great Lakes region into New France in the 17th century. The work, sung it its original French, is comprised of texts excerpted from the journals and diaries of explorers, missionaries and voyageurs. Taken together, these excerpts represent a single, European point of view. However, hearing the 17th-century French accounts with 21st-century hindsight reveals the Native American experience as a shadow perspective – not projected explicitly, but undeniably present. The deeper one goes into the French experience, the more prominent the shadow becomes.

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Prologue: A la France (Marc Lescarbot, 1618)

I. Benedicite opera Domini Domino (Claude Allouez, 1676)

II. Chose Merveilleuse (Gabriel Sagard, 1632)

III. La Tempête (Louis Hennepin, 1697)

IV. Sauvages (Marc Lescarbot, 1618) excerpt: