When the Guitar

Quick Facts

• Single-movement piece for SATB choir and guitar quartet
  • The piece was initially written in 2018 for SATB choir and cello, titled When the Violin
• Arranged in 2019
• Text is an English translation of the poem, “The Gift,” by 14th-century Persian poet, Hafiz
• Commissioned by Conspirare for Los Angeles Guitar Quartet

About the Piece

• Program notes from the composer:

“This piece is about that first moment of trust, of softening. About the most inward moments of the human experience, of realizing that ‘breakthroughs’ often don’t have the hard edge, the burst of energy that the word implies, but that they can be about finding tender, warm, deeply resonant spaces within ourselves as well.”

The Poem

When
The guitar
Can forgive the past

It starts singing.

When the guitar can stop worrying
About the future

You will become
Such a drunk laughing nuisance

That God
Will then lean dow
And start combing you into
Her
Hair.

When the guitar can forgive
Every wound caused by
Others

The heart starts
Singing.

— Hafiz, The Gift (tr. Daniel Ladinsky)¹

1. “When the Guitar,” Reena Esmail, accessed May 16, 2023, https://www.reenaesmail.com/catalog-item/when-the-guitar/.