Product Description
Colorful, challenging piano solo traces an Ojibwe familys harrowing journey by canoe down the Brule River and across Lake Superior to safety
Canoe (2022) by Adrienne Inglis (ASCAP)
For solo piano
Duration 9:22
Difficulty 5 advanced
Canoe (2022) by Adrienne Inglis (ASCAP), commissioned by Dr. Joseph Choi for solo piano, tells a harrowing story through music of the composers Ojibwe ancestor, Wabegiah, and her three young children. Wabegiah grew up at Upper Lake St. Croix in Wisconsin, married the French trader Mr. Couture, and had three children. Mr. Couture died suddenly just as the tensions with the Sioux became quite threatening. To protect her children from being killed by the Sioux, she took them on the long journey in a birch bark canoe down the Brule River and along the coast of Lake Superior all the way to Sault Ste. Marie.
As you would expect, much of the music represents water, but it also captures moments during their flight. Loud dissonant chords mark Mr. Coutures death and Wabegiahs grief. The unsettling fear motive in Locrian mode predominates as they begin to flee. As they head away from danger, the courage theme follows them downstream. In a dissonant conversation with an Ojibwe man on the Brule River, he refused to give the hungry travelers food, but told them to continue to the rivers mouth to find Wabegiahs aunt and uncle. The restful and nourishing family time on the shores of Lake Superior allows for variations on the family theme, playful, sleepy, and reflecting on the coming of autumn. With the courage theme as the subject, a fugue tracks their difficult passage across Lake Superior to the safety of Sault Ste. Marie.
Recounted by Eliza Morrison, a daughter from Wabegiahs second marriage, this journey took place in the early 1830s. The three children were born in 1828, 1829, and 1830. The youngest of the children was Angelique, the composers great great grandmother.
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