It's All Love

It’s All Love has been written for my grandmother who recently passed away. She was the most loving and accepting woman I have known and continues to be a role model for me in many regards. In the final week of her life, my grandmother began to slip in and out of consciousness. In a brief moment of clarity, she looked up to the ceiling with bright eyes and a smile wide on her face exclaiming “It’s all love. Faith, faith, faith, faith”. These were the last coherent words she spoke before passing away a few days later.

This piece reflects my grief and addresses my interpretation of her last words. While there is a deep sense of loss, there is yet a great amount of love and hope. The music begins with a closed chord which slowly opens expanding across the register to the vocal extremes. The notes are shared and passed around moving between soprano, tenor, alto, and bass. This symbolizes that from our core we grow and start to spread our love to one another. The ascending motivic lines are representative of my grandma’s ascent into the heavens. While the music primarily moves horizontally in its motion, the vertical chord moments act as the toll of a clock which suggest the nearing end.