Julie Giroux (b. 1961) is a composer in many media who has made her mark especially in the wind band realm. A Massachusetts native who grew up in Arizona and Louisiana, Giroux spent the early part of her career arranging and orchestrating music for film and television, as well as for several pop stars in Los Angeles. Since about 1997, she has focused her creative energies on original compositions. She has found broad interest in her work around the world, and she has been commissioned to write new music by ensembles of all levels. Most of her works are published by Musica Propria.
Giroux wrote Hymn for the Innocent in 2016 as a gift of sorts for Colonel Larry H. Lang, “in thanks for his service and friendship” as she says in its dedication. The importance of their friendship shines through in the program note that Giroux includes with the score:
This letter from myself to Colonel Larry Lang following receiving his recording with The United States Air Force Band best describes this piece, certainly better than any program notes I could write. The focus of the letter and the hymn are the same. Whom we love and lose are what defines us as human beings. The relationships we have with each other are our greatest strength. The ability to mourn and grieve, not alone, but with others, is the greatest gift of healing we have. Music grieves, it mourns and it heals.
Larry,
Thank you so much for the perfect recording. I will admit I can barely listen to it. So much pain, so much loss in a country, in families, in ourselves; to have it culminate into its own music – its own voice – is almost unbearable. Many times right after I mailed it to you I felt great dread and fear; fear that it wasn’t what I thought it was, that my emotions had gotten the better of me and as always, the fear of rejection or of being misunderstood. My one consolation was that I did not – and still do not think I had much at all to do with its conception. It came to me finished; every melody, counter, structure and dissonance pounding on me to be put on paper right then so it could continue its journey free again of earthly manipulation; free to mourn and love.
I am truly grateful it picked me for its dictation source, but I am also so very thankful that you were put in my life, you and every member of your wonderfully gifted United States Air Force Band. Thank you, Larry, for also helping this work find its true voice, its perfect voice. Please thank your band members for this gift. I will be forever thankful.
With my deepest gratitude,
Julie
She did later attempt a program note, which you can find on her website:
Hymn for the Innocent is a tribute to all the innocent lives that are lost whether by accident, disease or acts of violence. It also includes all those who serve, here and abroad, military and domestic who have sworn to protect the innocent and have lost their lives or lead a handicapped life as a result of this service. What has been lost by their passing is an infinite list of possibilities. What they could have been, could have accomplished or achieved and the holes left in all the lives they touched and would have affected surely is a sorrow above all sorrows. Loss is never easy but when loved ones are taken before their time the loss and grief seem to be compounded. This hymn is for them. My prayers will always include them. This hymn is for the survivors as well. My hope is that this music, this hymn can be a part of a healing process for some listener out there. Grief never goes away but music can be an instrument that can help you live with it.
She also includes some “Thoughts while composing this work:”
I often tell my students, composition and clinics alike, … that to be a musician you have to be able to submit and surrender to the music you are playing. You have to let it take control of your emotions and your soul and experience the journey AS the music, not just with it. As musicians when we play music, we are gifting the listeners with not just the music but our souls. And as that vessel we must be willing to lose a part of ourselves in the giving.
When composing you must be willing to leave a part of yourself in the music and on the page. There can be no walls, no hesitations. When you are finished with whatever it is you have just written, if you feel protective of the notes, the music, have a need to keep it from harm, a need to know that whoever you hand it to will care for it and help it be what it was meant to be, then you know what you have written was worth putting on the paper. I left a great part of me on these pages and for what its worth, I am happy to call it mine, if only for now. Once it is published it isn’t mine any longer. It belongs to whoever is playing, hearing & experiencing it and that is the magic, the gift of music.
Listen to the Lone Star Wind Orchestra below, but don’t stop there. Giroux specifies that
The tempo markings are a general suggestion and certainly other tempos, slower or faster are acceptable unless extreme. There are NO ritards or accelerations notated in the score by design. Those musical affections should come from you, the conductor and should be tailored to your own musical expression. Express yourself and let the performers know they need to bring a pencil to all rehearsals and that even on the performance to watch you because again, you may do something different than you did before. The piece should be fluid and expressive in the ways that healing, love and grief can be.
So listen to other recordings too, especially the Larry Lang original.
Here’s another one, with different musical choices:
And another:
See more about Hymn for the Innocent, including some score pages, at Musica Propria.