Dr. Dilworth has set Professor Rankine’s extraordinary poem to a thought-provoking piece of music that is both lyrical and dissonant. His title for the work is Weather: Stand the Storm, which captures both the title of the poem and the title of the spiritual (Stand the Storm) that is the central melodic theme.
Dr. Dilworth wrote an extensive set of performance notes for his piece, which is something I really appreciate as a choral singer. I’ll mention just a few items out of the many elements he put into the music.
The “George Floyd” Motives are different combinations of using the notes G and F. These notes are only one step (whole step) apart so they can create dissonance when they part of a chord and jagged leaps when they are part of a progression. These musical ideas generate exceptional poignancy regarding the death of Mr. Floyd.
There are many deliberate numerical references in the score but I’ll just discuss one here, and that is 8:46. This was the amount of time that George Floyd was pinned down. Dr. Dilworth therefore uses 8/8, 4/4, and 6/8 time signatures to embed those numbers in his work.
The section that has the text “Just us and the blues kneeling on a neck with the full weight of a man in blue.” is set to 12-bar blues.
If you are interested in the complete performance notes you might be able to buy a copy of the piano reduction choral score from his publisher, Hal Leonard, LLC. It is ISBN 978-1-70518-585-8.
Meanwhile, here is a link to a performance on Youtube that I think is particularly good: https://youtu.be/38drTqFhd6w. If you are in the Washington DC area, The Washington Chorus will be performing this work live at The Music Center at Strathmore on March 15th, 2025 at 7:30pm. You can get tickets here: https://thewashingtonchorus.org/stand-the-storm.
We must be soldiers for Art! 
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