Thine Every Flaw (2020)
for solo piano [2:30]

“Is it that God has at last removed his blessing from the U.S.A. and what we feel now is just the clank of the old historical machinery, the sudden jerking ahead of the roller-coaster cars as the chain catches hold and carries us back into history with its ordinary catastrophes, carries us out and up toward the brink from that felicitous and privileged siding where even unbelievers admitted that if it was not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least some great good luck had befallen us, and that now the blessing or the luck is over, the machinery clanks, the chain catches hold, and the cars jerk forward? — Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins

Thine Every Flaw takes its title from a later verse of “America the Beautiful.” It is primarily a 4-voice hymn that develops the melody’s third phrase, resettled with unorthodox harmonic rules. The calm homophonic texture is broken by staccato interjections, then an abrupt climax that starts grandiose but begins to drag. It is an invocation for self-examination and repair, finished in the build-up to Election Day, and is dedicated to the memory of Congressman John Lewis.