Note
Comfort Food was commissioned for Present Music Milwaukee’s annual Thanksgiving concert, and I wanted to write a piece suited to the occasion. Despite its name, the holiday seems less associated with actual “giving of thanks” than with the ritual preparation and consumption of certain foods. This is the case with holidays and religious festivals all over the world, in fact, where communal eating stands in for the spiritual or patriotic feelings which may have inspired the tradition.
I became interested in the intensely personal concept of “comfort food”. I undertook an informal survey of members of Milwaukee Choral Artists (who sang the première), as well as a sampling of my own friends and family, to find out their comfort foods. What emerged was a picture combining the visceral, pleasure-seeking, emotional elements of human comfort with the philosophical, nostalgic, sentimental aspects. Not all of these “comfort foods” turned out to be edible at all, in fact—unbidden by me, answers such as “walking”, “cats”, “solitude” appeared in my inbox. I arranged these, along with other intriguing answers (red-cooked pork belly, lutefisk, kedgeree) into a text which progresses from the pedestrian to the metaphysical via an episode of depressants (a happy instance of extramusical content spelling out a musical form). Comfort Food is therefore not a celebration of gluttony, but of what food and drink can mean to a individual beyond its substantive or cultural role.
Nutella
buttered toast
pastina
pasta with pepperoncino, garlic, and olive oil
kedgeree
liver and onions
fish and chips the English way
ramen
my mother’s meatloaf
pancakes
red wine
chicken noodle soup
matzoh ball soup
red-cooked pork belly
rye whiskey
potatoes of almost any kind
solitude
walking
cats
quiet
company
a good chair
my own bed
“Sense and Sensibility” with Emma Thompson
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person
Prokofiev seventh symphony
Listen
Timo Andres: Comfort Food
recorded live, November 18, 2012
performers Sharon Hansen, conductor; Milwaukee Choral Artists; Present Music
Purchase
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Comfort Food full score & parts, print edition
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Comfort Food full score & parts, PDF edition
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Comfort Food choral score, print edition
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Comfort Food choral score, PDF edition
Full Score: 20 pages, 11×17 format. Includes full score and 9 parts.
Choral Score: 24 pages, 9×12 format.
