Update Title: 03358165-432E-4074-B815-FF3209F8CC61

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“The Great Divide” was inspired by the book, The Great Divorce, by C.S. Lewis. The name of the
composition, however, was changed to “The Great Divide” to avoid any confusion in the title over the word,
“divorce,” to those who did not know the book. The original title of the book, The Great Divorce, is in
reference to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
In this allegory of heaven and hell, the narrator finds himself in a world of shadows (hell), which is a gray,
dark and dreary place. Because people cannot get along with each other, they move further and further apart
from each other so that it ends up also being a very empty place. However, the narrator finds himself standing
in a line of people waiting for a bus. As he stands in this line, it becomes obvious that these people are very
discontented and unhappy.
The bus comes and takes these people into the sky to a very beautiful and bright place (heaven). In this place,
the people on the bus are more like ghosts, and the reality of the place is too “solid” for their comfort. The
blades of grass do not bend and hurts their feet. When they try to step into a moving stream, they stay on top
of the water because it is like glass to them. Each of these characters has interactions with shining figures who
try to get them to change and to stay in heaven. Instead, each one of these ghosts makes the decision that they
would rather return to their own gray, shadowy, and unhappy world.
While the music loosely follows the narrative of the story, each movement is more like a portrait of each one
of these contrasting worlds. Elements of the story are in each movement, but it is more like looking at a
painting. The world of shadows and the ghosts are represented by more strident music while the world like
glass is represented by more consonant sounds.
Much of this composition was sketched out at Lake Sebago in Maine in June of 2008 and completed in the
following months on my return home. Unlike many of the pieces that I have written for orchestra, this piece
was not composed as the result of a commission. I simply wrote the piece because I wanted to pay tribute to
one of my favorite authors and to one of my favorite books. The performance of “The Great Divide” by the
Springfield Symphony Orchestra and Peter Stafford Wilson is the world premiere of the piece.

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