PRAIRIE LIGHT is based on three highly unusual watercolors that Georgia O'Keeffe painted during her year of teaching in Canyon, Texas in 1917. O'Keeffe is, of course, well-known for her expressionistic cow skulls and sensual flowers, but these three early works show a naïve, almost primitive sensitivity to light and shadow. I chose to place them in the order of sunrise, mid-day and night.

The work begins with Light Coming on the Plains, which follows O'Keeffe's visual imagery in broad washes of orchestral color. The painting shows a flat horizon line with outwardly expanding concentric ovals of blue light emerging from the center, just before sunrise. The music has a static bass line (the horizon), three extended phrases of a constantly growing melodic line, and a sense of expansion and warmth as the sun becomes visible.

The second section, Canyon with Crows, is more solidly grounded. The painting shows the convolutions of the Palo Duro Canyon, with gently rolling green and red-brown hills. Above it, three childlike crows appear, almost pasted onto the sky. The music is bubbling, bouncing and effervescent – staccato chords of brass suggest hopping birds and animals, and the three crows are suggested in solo lines of clarinet, oboe and flute. As the light begins to fade, an extended passage for muted strings accompanies the farewell songs of two of the crows.

Starlight Night has a rather unorthodox (for O'Keeffe) mechanical quality. The stars are arranged in regular rows, and they are squares and rectangles instead of points of light. Otherwise, the painting shows the exact same vantage point as Light Coming on the Plains: the horizon, the oval sky, and the shape of the canyon rim. The music begins with a sweet nighttime flute solo, echoed by high violins. Midway through, the orchestra stops its singing and hovers, while a piano and a xylophone begin a somewhat startling, percussive mantra – the square stars, the regularity of the universe. Over this gamelan-inspired pattern, the orchestra grows until a climax is reached, with the nighttime melody combined with the sunrise melody of the first movement. A 24-hour cycle of light has been experienced, with the evolving colors of nature as seen from a single viewpoint.

Prairie Light was commissioned by the Sherman (Texas) Symphony in celebration of its 20th anniversary season. It was first performed by that orchestra, with the composer conducting, on March 1, 1986.

– Notes by Dan Welcher