"How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart" exists in versions for soprano, mezzo, or tenor -- plus piano.
This song, which sets text by Jonathan Breit, is an attempt to give expression, in some way, to the unfathomable trauma of 9/11. I envisioned a sense of grace in how New York came together to rescue and heal itself, something I experienced firsthand living in lower Manhattan when the event occurred. I’ve never experienced the kindness and support of strangers as I did on that day and in the difficult months that followed, and I thought of this as I wrote the music.
How graceful some things are, falling apart.
Stopped clocks, a dancer tumbling, or a breaking heart.
A missing child, an empty plate,
the rust on a lost wind-up toy.
A shattered glass.
Or looming towers crumbling
into dust.
Journal Zebuline
"At the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Tenor Jonghyun Park matched his art of sur-legato and diction to the modesty and melancholic interiority of the nocturnal repertoire, [How Graceful Some Things Are, Falling Apart] composed by Sarah Kirkland Snider in profound homage to the victims of September 11, 2001."