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Mental Gymnastics (2011)

Duration: 11 ’30”
Written for SSAATTBB

First page(s) of each movement (pdf)

Complete tracks: Mvt.1    Mvt. 2    Mvt. 3    Mvt. 4

Mental Gymnastics was commissioned by and composed for Larry Wyatt, Director of Choral Activities at the University of South Carolina since 1989 and Murray State University alumnus. Credit for the idea behind this piece goes to Larry, who suggested I go to Circus Skate, a local skating rink in Murray, Kentucky, to meet its owner, Joe W. Nanney. I requested a copy of a book Joe completed in 2001 called Mental Gymnastics.  It consists of 1127 thoughts, observations, words of wisdom, etc. captured by a tape recorder in the middle of the night, and produced by a mind untainted by “sex, TV, and social events” (as stated in the Foreword).  Joe’s objectives for the book, also in the Foreword, were as follows: 

1. To test the hypothesis that my mind was at work while I was asleep; and, to ascertain what I was thinking.

2. To play priest and demonstrate that by overcoming lust I could reach a higher level of introspective thinking.

The book contains a wonderful mix of the silly and nonsensical with the contemplative and profound, often one right after the other.  My composition begins with the former, setting an excerpt from his rather humorous Methodology in the Foreword, but gradually drifts toward the latter as the piece goes on.  The last movement sets several of Joe’s thoughts about religious tolerance, a topic he revisits many times in his book and about which we are both passionate.  As technology makes our world ever smaller and the possibility of knowing about all the views in the world that conflict with our own grows ever greater, it would seem that tolerance is the only reasonable way to proceed.

Text Selections from Mental Gymnastics

1. Reaching a Higher Level
Text comes from the “Methodology” section of the Foreword:

I withdrew from sex, TV, and social events for a period of three years, with 3 to 5 hours per night of classical music to assist in programming the mind—particularly as to overcoming lust…which took one year; and, in reaching a higher or more meditative level of thinking. I went to bed with a tape recorder and recorded my thoughts during the second and third years of exercise…usually at 2 to 3:30 A.M.—uncensored…while semi-conscious. [The italicized words were not set.]

2. Do You Savor?
#41: Do you savor the original, the shocking, the unorthodox, the mental bliss that comes with a dip into “mental virginity”?

3. Sea of Learning
#621: Twice I thought…thrice I acted…once I erred.
#540: There’s too much to gain…so, don’t refrain, from using your brain.
#912: Cast your little thoughts into a sea of learning…and, when you retrieve them, they will have grown.

4. The Golden Rule
#40: What degree of toleration should we bestow upon those whose spiritual views differ from our own?
#34: What variance from the norm do you find tolerable?
#696: Whose side has God been on in past wars?
Do unto others (from quote beforehand, #171)
Reaching a higher level (from first movement, Foreword “Methodology’)

Text by Joe W. Nanney

Contact the composer directly to inquire about score/parts: mikedambrosio@gmail.com

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