Sweeping the Skies
soprano and orchestra
Duration: 17 minutes
Premiere: September 2026
Sari Gruber, Soprano
Daniel Curtis, conductor
Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic
Pittsburgh, PA
Instrumentation
2 Flutes
2 Oboes
2 B♭ Clarinets
2 Bassoons
4 Horns in F (1, 3 | 2, 4)
2 Trumpets in C
2 Trombones
Bass Trombone
Tuba
Timpani
3 Percussion
Bass Drum
Crash Cymbals
Suspended Cymbal
Large Tam-Tam
Rute (played on Bass Drum)
Glockenspiel (sounds 15va)
Vibraphone
Harp
Celesta (sounds 8vb)
Soprano Voice
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Double Bass (sounds 8vb)
Composer’s Note
Joy and awe and wonder are what pulled me into the career I have; as a young person, making music made me feel things so much bigger than myself, and it stretched my understanding of what it meant to be moved by something. To build a career in music, I, like many others, committed to years of training and practice, honing meticulous attention to detail and technique so that I could continue to be part of those larger-than-the-universe moments. At times my technical knowledge came into conflict with the magic I feel for music, but as I continue to learn and grow, those once-opposing elements have come to co-exist in a symbiotic space.
Maria Mitchell (1818-1889), whose words anchor this whole piece, led a similar path; a person who held her awe for the skies in the same regard as her incredible, mathematical mind. Mitchell was the first female American astronomer; she was incredibly methodical in her work and teaching, but never lost a sense of reverence for what she studied. She passed this genuineness on to her students at Vassar College, where she was among the nine founding professors of the institution and taught from 1865-1888.
I worked through some crucial material in Sweeping the Skies during the Artemis II mission in April 2026. For 10 days, like many people around the world, I was glued to mission updates and the crew that brought us along on their journey. Their work asked us all to think about perspective and connection, about distance and scale. Throughout their trip, astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen were people thriving at the absolute apex of their professional practice and fully able to appreciate the joy, awe, and wonder of their work–and they happily shared both with all of us here on Earth! The Artemis II mission was the catalyst that helped me fuse the technical material with the artistic world of Sweeping the Skies; it reminded me that there was room for complexity to be explored and known, and for wonder to exist without explanation in the same breath.
Sweeping the Skies is a piece that celebrates the overlaps between things we often see placed at opposite ends of a spectrum: individual and collective, earth and sky (and beyond!), technique and artistry, information and wonder.
With gratitude to Sari Gruber and Daniel Nesta Curtis for their care and musicianship, their ability to make music with full joy and outstretched arms; and to the musicians of the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic for working towards this life of holding the technical skillset in the same hands as your reverence and awe for music: keep exploring.
Text
I saw the stars in the evening
I met them like old friends,
I saw the stars and met them like old friends
from whom I had long been parted.
It was a grand night, not a breath of air, not a fringe of a cloud,
all clear, all beautiful.
Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the world!
I am just learning to notice the different colors of the stars.
Betelgeuse is strikingly red, while Regel is yellow.
Blue stars I do not yet see, and but little lilac.
One gets attached to certain midnight apparitions;
the aurora is always a pleasant companion,
a meteor seems to come like a messenger from departed spirits
very bright, very short-lived, fleeting, and beautiful.
And even the blossoming of the trees in the moonlight becomes a sight looked for with pleasure.
Every observer tries to do the impossible;
They try to notice the first contact,
to note the exact instant the unseen touches the seen:
The corona burst forth,
A glory indeed!
It encircled the sun with soft light, and it sent off streamers for millions of miles into space.
And now it was quick work to see what could be seen,
To make notes and mark time,
All in less than three minutes, knowing all the time that narrow limitation!
And as much as we needed more time,
The sun came forth, we rejoiced with Nature,
and felt we loved the light.
We know a few things once hidden,
And being known they seem easy.
Flashings of the northern lights, and meteor showers...
there are comets, there are the brightening and flickering variable stars,
And for all of these the reasons are [as] clear as the successions of day and night;
They lie just beyond the daily mist of our lives.
The laws of nature are not discovered by accidents;
Theories do not come by chance;
They are not born of the hurry and worry of daily toil;
They are patiently waited for, received with cautious reserve,
They are diligently sought,
They are accepted with reverence and awe!
My more than half a century of working has worn and tired me.
The fatigue of the winter journey showed me my strength was waning.
I am at once recuperating, but shrink yet from the open skies.
I am always the better for open air breathing,
and was certainly made for the wandering life...
Give me a place to stand on...
Give me a place…
All text arranged by the composer from Maria Mitchell’s diaries and lecture notes, in the public domain, provided by the Maria Mitchell Association.