for solo piano
duration: 7’
PROGRAM NOTE
The Jewish concept of T’shuvah means ‘to return’ as well as ‘to repent.’ It connotes the process of returning to our original spiritual state, a state of purity and goodness, a process undertaken each Rosh Hashanah in preparation for the day of judgement, or Yom Kippur. If sin is a straying from the path of goodness, we can always choose to return.
In our own lives we’re constantly trying to return to things: to return home; to return to loved ones; to return to a state of being or a time in our lives we look back on with fondness. But, of course, true return is never possible. Things have always shifted, transformed, grown, decayed, ceased to be, started anew. Nothing ever remains exactly as it once was.
This music, a set of simple arcing arpeggios, continually returns to its opening four chords. In between, it wanders in widening circles before coming back. It’s simple and direct; almost naive. Perhaps an evocation of a deeper, truer music, for some deeply buried part of ourselves.
“Return again, return again
return to the land of your soul
return to who you are
return to what you are
return to where you are
born and reborn again.”
Shaina Noll