Chemistry – Song for Contralto Voice & Piano

Composing a song that is a gift for a friend’s granddaughter is fraught with a number of perils, particularly when one of the inspirations is that the recipient of the song likes Adele tunes. Adele’s songs are mostly romantic songs about lost or unrequited love, so the lyrics couldn’t really come across as being FROM the grandmother.

Knowing that Aurora is studying chemistry, however, gave me a clue as to how I could make the piece work nicely: make it sound like a love song about the chemistry between two people, when in fact, the lyrics are talking about how our use of chemistry is both responsible for the state of our environment and the means we must use to fix it.

I did use my usual trick of starting with words or names and have composed both “Aurora” and “Chemistry” into the notes of the piece, the former in the accompaniment, and the latter as the foundation for the verse melody.