Basic Information
Instrumentation: Mixed choir (SATB)
Duration: 4:30
Year composed: 2023
Description
Written for C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective and Zsuzsanna Ardó’s PlanetWoman project
Performed by C4: The Choral Composer/Conductor Collective on March 16, 2024 at St. Luke in the Fields church, NYC
Winner of the 2024 Composers Now ASCAP Foundation Bart Howard Fund Honorarium
Zsuzsanna Ardó wrote The Ogre on February 24, 2022, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.
This piece is about two very human responses to war: willful ignorance and community resilience.
Throughout this work, I set the words describing war – “ogre,” “guzzler,” “prowls” – in dissonant tones that repeat every time the words come up, to reflect the ever-present nature of the war.
There’s an undercurrent of the idea of picnicking – “we picnicked,” “we picnic” – that starts as a reflection of our indifference, and ends as a call to resist.
I hope that this piece can give us a space to reflect on our reactions to the great ills of the world, and inspire us to action.
“In The Ogre, the refrain ‘we picnic’ has several interpretations. One of them is our capacity to compartmentalise what stares us in the face.‘We picnic’ implies, in this context, the inclination for living a surface existence. The ‘art’ of cognitive dissonance.
Ignoring The Ogre.
But the refrain, ’we picnic’, also references an actual picnic in the stormy afternoon of 19 August 1989, across the border between Austria and Hungary. This picnic acted as a tipping point in recent history. This picnic, an example of people coming together to be on the same page, is about active thinking together rather than being isolated by thoughts.
Resisting The Ogre.”
Zsuzsanna Ardó
Score & Recording
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