WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON
For soprano and cello (2011)
or
For soprano and viola (2013)
5 minutes
Program Notes
On September 12, 1962 President Kennedy gave a speech declaring America’s goal of sending a manned mission to the moon by the end of the decade. On May 2, 2011 President Obama announced that US Special Forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. Soon after that announcement, tweeter, astrophysicist, and director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil De Grasse Tyson tweeted:
Two American goals that took a decade, and more than $100 billion to achieve: 1) Walk on the Moon 2) Find Bin Laden.
It is a chilling comparison.
For my piece I set a small portion of Kennedy’s moon speech:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
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