Home

Commissioned for Eagan High School’s treble ensemble Bel Canto, “Home” is dedicated to anybody, who never felt welcome where they are from, seeking a place to call home. This work was composed during a time of escalating violence against immigrants to the United States and Indigenous populations around the world and stochastic terrorism weaponized against transgender and non-binary communities. The author of the text, Devondra Banks, wrote this poem to express her grief upon learning that her friend, a fellow mother, was moving out of state since Texas criminalized the care of transgender children like her daughter. Open to multiple interpretations, Banks’s words address realties of inhumanity ranging from forced displacement and refugees’ experiences to people’s lack of shelter, community, healthcare, and other basic living resources.

The music begins with a declamatory open fifth, followed by a gradually descending stepwise bass line with a melancholic sense of inevitability. Then, “with quiet courage,” the choir sings to convey a refusal to accept an unfit home. Anticipating a shift from G minor to G major, the harmony leading up to the final cadence of the exposition hints at a key change envisioning what home could be. Upon arriving in major mode, the mood picks up, and the choir sings with a clear vision of what “Home will be.” In the end, the same open fifth resounds, in a manner that someone claims their own space, this time, in the place they will call home.

-Mari Esabel Valverde