Móinn (2024)

for orchestra - 15'

David Kirkland Garner

 

Móinn is the name of one of the serpents that live at the base of the sacred Yggdrasil, an ash tree that binds the nine worlds of Norse Mythology together and whose roots spread to past, present, and future.*

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This piece is named for this small yet intriguing character from Norse mythology and the grand imagery and imagination it conjures felt like an appropriate title for a piece for the symphony orchestra—an equally grand, intriguing, and awe-inspiring ensemble. I am grateful for the opportunity to write this new work for the University of South Carolina Symphony Orchestra and Scott Weiss and this year’s celebration of 100 years of music at Carolina, which connects to the mythical ash tree’s roots spreading outward to past, present, and future. While writing, I also found myself thinking a lot about my own experience as a student when I worked as the personnel manager for the orchestras at the University of Michigan.

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I spent many hours in rehearsals, seated just behind the conductor, listening to the ensemble rehearse pieces like Respighi’s Roman Trilogy, Bernstein’s Overture to Candide, and Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture, to name a few. These works provided masterclasses in orchestration, moelody, and form. Móinn is kind of a love letter to these works and others in an overture form that combines diverse themes with a wide range of emotional characters in a single movement trajectory. I hear Móinn as an overture or summary of a much bigger story—an imagined opera or ballet around the serpent who lives at the base of the tree of life.

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*Yggdrasil (eg-dras-il). (2020). In T. Bane, Encyclopedia of Mythological Objects (1st ed.). McFarland. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6NjIxMzk=?aid=98800