The Two-Headed Calf

Listen to the work here!
 
The Two-Headed Calf is a short work for solo glockenspiel and narrator. The text recited by the narrator is taken from the poem of the same title by the American poet Laura Gilpin, written in 1977. Gilpin’s poem is written in two contrasting stanzas; the first, in the future tense, describes the aftermath of an infant cow born with a genetic defect; the second, in the present tense, describes the living calf feeling completely at peace with the world. Through this heart-wrenching juxtaposition, Gilpin pleads for greater awareness of the present moment and a centering of life’s perfect moments over an unstoppable race towards future and fate. I have captured that juxtaposition in this work for glockenspiel, which takes the structure of the poem as its form. The musical material is in free-time, with roughly proportional notation, and follows and word paints the text in an oratorical way. As the character of the text changes, so does the modal qualities of the melodic material, and the work ends with a tonal question mark, signifying the audience’s awareness of the somber undertones of the calf’s perfect night, and our inability to save him from his eventual fate.
 
This work and four other solo percussion works constitute The Empathy Cycle, connected by their themes of love, understanding, and the resilience of human kindness. The Two-Headed Calf was commissioned by Noah Avelar and written for his Masters recital “Object[ive] Permanence” at Texas A&M University Commerce.
 
"The Two-Headed Calf" from THE HOCUS POCUS OF THE UNIVERSE by Laura Gilpin, copyright © 1977 by Laura Crafton Gilpin. Used by permission of Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.