Lansing McLoskey (1964 - Present)

Introduction
Lansing McLoskey, born in 1964, found himself interested into music not by traditional composers like Bach and Beethoven but rather The Beatles, Bauhaus and Black Flag. Instead of practicing counterpoint, McLoskey was a guitarist and writing songs for punk rock bands in the 1980’s. Surprisingly, it is through this process that made him love classical music. McLoskey would go on to become a very well decorated composer, winning more than two dozen national and international awards, including the 2016 American Prize, the 2016 Robert Avalon International Composition Award, and the prestigious Lieberson Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

http://www.lansingmcloskey.com

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Work Analysis
Prex Penitentialis: The Prayer of Petrarch was a 3 movement work Commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts and is based on the writings of the Renaissance philosopher Petrarch, and deals with the battles and struggles between body and soul. The piece overall uses a soprano vocalist and a chamber orchestra. On McLoskey’s website, he describes the piece saying that “It is both prayer and dialogue, with the mind interrupting the soul’s pious efforts and causing it to lament its weakness and inconsistency”. The piece very much starts in its prayer roots, emulating a gregorian chant of the text. It even stays in the style of the text as well by using pseudo-Landini cadences and having an emphasis on open fifths. The work shows to have an internal struggle as it tugs between calm and loud sections. This struggles appears to never come to a resolution in the piece; as McLoskey puts it “there is a sense of reconciliation - or perhaps symbiosis, if you will. The conflict remains, but a vision of hope and faith provides temporal relief”.

http://www.lansingmcloskey.com/prex.html

Comparisons
With McLoskey emulating old Gregorian chants in this piece, there's nothing you can compare this to besides those old hymns.

Observations
McLoskey’s take on gregorian chants is a great listen. The soprano singer, Andrea Fullington, really gave the text a nice texture that is normally never heard. The idea behind this work is also has value to it as the struggle between body and soul is a debate that will always come no matter the century.