I wrote the music for Incarnate during a week in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge mountains a few summers ago, and while I was out there, I chose several quintessentially Appalachian elements to weave into the fabric of the music. The hush and calm of Aaron Copland’s America-inspired Appalachian Spring inspired the music of “Creation,” “the Birth of Jesus,” and “new creation.” Interspersed throughout the underscores are otherworldy-riffs that respond to the harmony of The Arcadian Wild’s “Spring: Wake,” which was one of the carols that Hope used that year.
Most significantly, I used real-life fiddle tunes throughout the underscores whose titles remind me of different parts of the Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration narrative. I used the fiddle tune Snake Winder for “Out from the Garden” and “flight to Egypt,” because it reminds me of evil, and I used Wild Rose of the Mountain for “an Angel visits Mary” and “here & now” because it reminds me of Christ. I couldn’t find a fiddle tune called Incarnate, to use in “Creation” and “Shepherds and Angels,” so I wrote my own.
