Carol Sams is a well-known Seattle composer and soprano whose works have been performed by many area ensembles, including Orchestra Seattle and the Seattle Chamber Singers, Washington Composers Forum, and the University of Washington Contemporary Group. A student of Darius Milhaud, her compositions have also been performed throughout the United States and in Europe. Her full-length opera The Pied Piper of Hamelin, commissioned by the Tacoma Opera, was premiered in 1993 and repeated in 1994. Along with many songs, choral pieces, and a symphony, Ms. Sams has a total of twelve operas to her credit. She holds a DMA degree in composition from the University of Washington, an MA from Mills College, and is currently on the music faculty at North Seattle Community College as well as music director at Prospect Congregational Church in Seattle.

The Earthmakers is an oratorio that relates creation myths from a variety of different cultures around the world; is set to a libretto selected by Dr. Rebecca Parker: poems that can be found in News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness, chosen and introduced by Robert Bly (Sierra Club Books, 1980); myths from various native peoples and ancient texts and are adapted from versions included in Creation Myths by Marie-Louise Von Franz (Spring Publications, 1972); the Naareau story recorded by Sir Arthur Griinble in his book A Pattern of Islands (London, 1952); and the Father Raven story reported by Knud Rasmussen in Die Gabe Des Adlers (The Eagle's Gift), translated by Isobel Hutchinson.  For the 1987 world premiere performance of The Earthmakers, the composer and librettist provided the following program notes:

The Earthmakers begins and ends in darkness. The opening introductory section starts with the words "Sometimes at night" and the work closes with the words of poet Galway Kinnell, "half my life belongs to the wild darkness." Wildness and darkness frame the oratorio as they frame the imagination of storytellers, adventurers, the curious, and the creative. Between the wild and the dark are a collection of mythic tales and poetry from diverse cultures, with the work of contemporary poets interspersed. The myths are panoramic—cosmic and objective, and the poems are close-ups—subjective, detailed, particular, intense. Each illumines the other.

The music does the same thing. Usually for the poems smaller orchestral groups are used, including one a cappella setting, in order to give an intimate feeling. For the myths, different compositional techniques are employed that mirror the essential character of each story.

The Father Raven story is improvisational in character—as if the storyteller were making it up as he goes along—and contains a story within a story. Likewise, the music is improvisational in style and contains a middle contrasting section framed by a bass solo. The God Who Laughed Seven Times story has seven contrasting, illustrative sections, each described differently by the music. The recurrent laugh is the element that holds them together. In this myth particularly the music is used to create sound pictures. Light is set as a tentative, curling sound in the high violins, lonely and delicate like some small thing in the dark cosmos. Water is set as ripples, as wave action, with an aleatoric chorus and woodwinds. When bitterness appears the images become much more subjective. Bitterness is pictured with tone colors—the dark sound of the male voices with baritone solo.

The third myth is the story of Naareau and it divides into two sections. In the first section Naareau creates a woman and a man. The creation of the woman, NeiTeakea, is set like a Polynesian dance—graceful, tonal, and rhythmic. Na Atibu, the man, is described by a timpani solo. Their lying together creates Naareau the Younger. The father makes a toy for his son, which turns out to be the world. But in order for the son to play with it he has to open the world which is like a rock. Here the myth narrative is interrupted by a cappella chorus singing "Go inside a stone." Through the intimacy of the a cappella sound the discovery of a new world is compared with self-discovery. The final section of Naareau's myth introduces people into the world, and invites the audience to sing along.

The Big Bang theory and the Zuni Indian myth share several common elements. To show them as if they were the same ideas from different sides of the brain, the Zuni myth is sung with wide, vocal leaps and an unstable tonality. In contrast, the Big Bang Theory is spoken in a pompous way by a stuffy university professor who becomes carried away by the poetry in his own concepts and begins to sing. These two stories are superimposed so that their similar images occur at the same time, and comment on each other.

The piece comes to a close with a final, intimate, personal invocation to those particular creative powers of darkness within all of us.

© 1987 Carol Sams and Rebecca Parker