When first commissioned to write a violin concerto with a choral element, Higdon began searching for poetry on which to set the composition. She wrote in the score program notes:
To create the best form for the piece, I needed a group of poems that would not be too long (because I wanted to create different moods within this large work), and that would fit together somehow thematically. I looked for a long time, through poetry from various countries and time periods. But I discovered that sometimes the answer is in your own backyard: walking through the faculty lounge at Curtis one day, I asked Jeanne Minahan, the head of the Liberal Arts Department (who happens to be a poet) if she had anything that I could read. When I got some books of her poetry in my hands, I knew I had found what I was looking for... a series of poems, that resonated with me, and would provide different emotional settings, as if they were lessons in life arranged like different rooms within a house.[1]
Structure
The Singing Rooms has a duration of roughly 37 minutes and is composed in seven movements set to the text of poems by Jeanne Minahan:[1]
Howard Goldstein of BBC Music Magazine praised The Singing Rooms, writing, "Higdon [...] often lets the poems take a backseat to the concerto-like solo violin part (beautifully played by Jennifer Koh), resulting in a lavishness of musical gesture occasionally at odds with the intimate subject matter."[3] Bradley Bambarger of The Star-Ledger compared the work favorably to Higdon's Violin Concerto, despite noting that "it still tends to be melodically anodyne."[4]