Notes on hours:

When Alice-Anne Light and I started this journey together in 2018, we had no idea where this would take us. In the midst of a time of turmoil and grief, we were granted the opportunity to create a major song cycle, but were lost as to what we wanted to say. While still in the unmooring, I saw Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. The film casts Ethan Hawke as Reverend Toller, the pastor of a small congregation, who finds himself increasingly distraught and radicalized after the suicide of a local environmental activist he had been counseling. Sitting in the theater, I felt the acid and ache of despair and grief flood my veins. I watched the film over and over, comforted by the shared experience of grief. I realized I had not been able to talk to God. I realized how alone I had felt.

I wanted to know how people had talked to God throughout the centuries, at a time when I had no idea how to start. Needing a guide, I turned to the idea of the Book of Hours- an exact guide for how and when to pray. After a year of immersing myself in writers that I believe were talking to God, I assembled the document that became hours. The piece is a journey through a “dark night of the soul”, what Inayat Khan called, “a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.” The descending four-note motif that leads us through the piece undergoes that annihilation: it is the sinking feeling of grief, the nakedness of receptiveness, the murmuring whimper of tears. The four notes are a prayer hoping for an answer.

Prayer has come to be called many things: The Secret, manifesting, etc. It can be as long as praying the rosary, or as simple as what Anne Lamott calls the three essential prayers: “Help, Thanks, Wow.” All of this, for me, boils down to one common need: the desire to open oneself and become part of a larger system, to look outside ourselves for hope, to find the annihilation that transforms into answers to why and how.

In First Reformed, Reverend Toller writes in his journal: “The desire to pray itself is a type of prayer. How often we ask for genuine experience when all we really want is emotion.”

This piece is about the desire to pray.

Cecil Price Walden, November 2023

hours is a sixteen-movement melodrama for mezzo- soprano and piano without extractable movements–an unusual format that defies the traditional "song cycle" trope. The cycle includes portions for both acapella voice and solo piano and is in three parts: a triptych portraying the "dark night of the soul" as first explored in the poetry of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591).

The work draws structural inspiration from the 12th-century Book of the Hours which combined biblical texts, psalms, and poetry into a devotional or prayer book. These prayer books would also frequently include "illuminated" texts or elaborate illustrations for each of the works included. Because of this historical relationship between text and visual art, hours has a third component, artist Kristy Kristinek, who provides live dance-based art during the performance. The result is an hour-long song cycle and a unique set of paintings for every performance, each reflecting that time, that moment of performance.

This idea was born through feelings of hopelessness, loss, loneliness, and exhaustion. This work is our response to living as young adults in the South in the 21st century: our roots run deep, yet we see that tradition is no longer serving us. We experience this throughout almost every facet of our existence: family, love, sexuality, religion, politics, war, and survival. Many feel the need to reassess who we are and where we are going. This piece endeavors to give voice to this new reality.

hours is available on all digital platforms, including Apple Music and Spotify, and for physical purchase at Albany Records and Amazon. Access the album booklet for more information, texts, and translations here. For more information on hosting a performance of hours at your institution, contact us. For more art and future news, follow us on Instagram.