Mormoniana

Sixteen American composers who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were invited to participate in a collaborative project at the instigation of Mormon Artists Group. The premise was simple: each composer was to select a visual artwork created by an LDS artist and then write a piano composition inspired by it. The finished piano works were to be joined together to form a new, 16-movement concert work for the piano. The resulting score, a celebration of LDS artists and composers, is titled Mormoniana (Mor-mo-ni-ana).

Alongside the composers, visual artist Valerie Atkisson was engaged to create two original artworks on the theme of music (the first for the front cover, shown above, and the second, a large image to be bound into the volume as a frontispiece). Michael Hicks, himself a gifted composer, accepted an invitation to author an essay on the topic of Mormon music. Finally, the distinguished concert pianist Grant Johannesen agreed to place the compositions in sequence and record the score.

The process of creating the music began with each composer selecting a visual artwork and then responding to it musically. The composers approached this task in various ways. Some composers reacted to the visual works (paintings, graphic works and photographs) in a literal fashion and created a musical sibling of the image. For others, it was sufficient that an artwork and music share a related atmosphere. A few of the composers engaged in a dialogue directly with the visual artists and, upon discovering a common theme, explored similarities and differences of approach. There was no specific direction given regarding the connection of music and art, only that the music react in some way to the visual art.

The volume, Mormoniana, includes the complete score of sixteen compositions, the reproductions of the artworks that the composers selected, the CD recording, the essay, and the original editioned print. Each copy is signed by the artist and numbered.