piccolo, bass clarinet, baritone sax, contrabassoon, percussion, piano, 2 violins, cello
8 minutes
performed here by Great Noise Ensemble
Listen:
About:
Her Exit was written less as a response and more as a different perspective on the story that inspired Lennon and McCartney’s She’s Leaving Home, as heard on the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. When I started thinking about this project, the perspective of the lyrics in She’s Leaving Home really stuck out at me: the story is delivered by an omniscient outsider, seemingly gazing down at the characters as their lives play out. After finding out that the song was written about a real person and an actual sequence of events that Paul McCartney read about in the newspaper, I thought it would be interesting to try to write my piece solely from the perspective of the pregnant teenage runaway. In Her Exit, I tried to create a musical world that’s the polar opposite of the sweet and delicate She’s Leaving Home, akin to looking at a photographic negative image of the Beatles’ presentation of the story.
