Anthracite Fields Anthracite Fields Anthracite Fields is an oratorio for choir and chamber ensemble by the American composer Julia Wolfe. The work was commissioned by the Mendelssohn Club with contributions from New Music USA and was premiered by Bang on a Can All Stars and the Mendelssohn Club Chorus in Philadelphia, April 26, 2014. It was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. The oratorio commemorates the history of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Coal Region in what the Pulitzer Prize citation described as "a powerful oratorio for chorus and sextet evoking Pennsylvania coal-mining life around the turn of the 20th Century." Music critic
Anthracite Fields dissonances in the vocal parts are whole step apart. Then in measure 30 the last syllable of “flowers” ends on a G. And then the song changes. In measure 34, rather than the vocalists resolving to the tonic through a 4th or a 5th they resolve in sixteenth tones a whole step apart. In measure 52, everyone sings staccato eighth notes and the dissonances are either are primarily a whole step apart, or a 4th and 5th apart. Anthracite Fields Anthracite Fields is an oratorio for choir and chamber ensemble by the American composer Julia Wolfe. The work was commissioned