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The Dawn’s Early Light. SATB, Cello, Four Guitars, 20′. Text: Life Among the Piutes (1883), Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (c.1844–1891), ed. K.S., and “The Star-Spangled Banner” (1814), Francis Scott Key (1779–1843). Commissioned for Conspirare and Craig Hella Johnson, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. Premiered November 2nd, 2019 by Conspirare, the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet, and cellist Douglas Harvey, Craig Hella Johnson conducting, at the Austin Independent School District Performing Arts Center, Austin, Texas, and November 3rd, 2019 at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, Houston. On the CD The Singing Guitar, Delos. Top 10 Classical Album, 2020: Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune Of all the national anthems, “The Star Spangled Banner” is the only one that’s a question. Is the flag still there? The flag we saw yesterday, before the night and the bombs fell on this land of the free and the brave, is it still there? I pondered this while reading Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. Her 1883 autobiography is the first book by a Native American woman. Sarah was born Thocmetony (“shell-flower”) Winnemucca around 1844 in what is now Nevada. Through lectures and writings she became a tireless advocate for her continually oppressed people. Good and bad interactions between Paiutes and whites fill her memoir. Surprising to me was her learning “The Star-Spangled Banner” from her grandfather, the tribal chief. He had welcomed the newcomers enthusiastically, and had worked with the U.S. Army. He believed that light-skinned and dark-skinned peoples, separated at the Creation, were now being reunited in one family. When Sarah finally heard white people sing this anthem, though, it was different from the song she had learned. And so I wondered what a “Star-Spangled Banner”—untethered to memory, feeling its way through pride, atrocity, and respect for an ideal—might sound like. I imagined a wonder at our now well-known words in this early light, with their questions and fear. Does the flag still fly? Are the people still free and brave? But the wonder is Sarah’s, who determines to see herself—and everyone—as beautiful. She wants everyone to be happy with her.

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