Extraordinary Flora

for orchestra
​Length: ca. 8'
Instrumentation: 2(II=Picc).2.2.2 - 4.2.3.1 - Timp.Perc(1) - Harp - Cel - Strings​Availability: Direct all inquiries to hilarypurrington@gmail.com​
Perusal Score
Program Note
I composed Extraordinary Flora during the summer of 2014. I borrowed the opening harmonies—as well as much of the musical material—from April 5, 1974, a choral work I had composed several years prior. The text, a poem of the same title by Richard Wilbur, describes an initial reaction to significant change. The narrator, confused and apprehensive, surveys a landscape transitioning from winter to spring. The terrain appears to be in a state of upheaval and disarray as the snow melts and exposes a layer of dead grass and mud. In the final line of the poem—which inspired the title of Extraordinary Flora—the narrator acknowledges that something beautiful will grow out of the chaos: "'Flowers,' I said, 'will come of it.'"
Premiere
Read & recorded by the Juilliard Orchestra in 2014; performed by UNC Greensboro Symphony Orchestra in 2019.
Recording