It’s time for my Music TBT, where I randomly choose a work from my repertoire and reminisce about its beginnings!
Today’s TBT Selection is…
In the Forest (Amazing Grace)
(Purchase the sheet music and listen on your favorite platform!)
This original work by Sarah Wallin Huff creatively weaves the beloved Amazing Grace melody in and out of a second original tune titled “In the Forest,” evoking a meditative and melancholy sense of wandering and reflection, as if hidden from the outside world.
This composition for string quartet was composed in 2011 at the request of Danielle Rosaria Cummins and the organization Alternate Avenues. The piece existed originally as only an unfinished sketch for solo piano, started some years prior. When Wallin Huff was requested to compose a quick-and-dirty string quartet arrangement of the traditional tune Amazing Grace for a formal fundraising banquet being held in two days, Wallin Huff was inspired to take her old sketch of “In the Forest” and turn it into this present string quartet that was instantly well-received and continues to be sought after in performance.
Not much else I can say about this lovely tune. I’m just super-duper happy I could use that old piano sketch and turn it into this beautiful string quartet! I never get tired of listening to it or playing it… See if you can hear the “Amazing Grace” theme sneaking its way into the latter part of the “In the Forest” half, in the viola part!
