From the Chamber Singers and Community Choir to a cappella groups and Senior Sing, music has long united the Kenyon community. For Kenyon’s 2024 bicentennial, Professor of Music Benjamin R. “Doc” Locke updated the College’s songbook, “Songs of Kenyon,” for the first time since 1957. “Traditions, like institutions, change over time,” Associate Provost Ted Mason notes in the revised songbook’s foreword. “The relationship we have with song isn’t going anywhere but should necessarily be approached with a modern lens, reflecting the richness of Kenyon’s community.”

The updated “Songs of Kenyon,” published in December 2024, includes a new song titled “The Height of this Hill.” According to Locke, the piece was originally commissioned by Kenyon in 2011 to commemorate the successful capital campaign, “We Are Kenyon.” Locke invited English major and Chamber Singer Marta Evans ’06 to write the text, and “some officers of the College suggested changes to the poem she submitted, seeking to create an iteration that mentioned the title of the campaign, but she gently and wisely rebuffed any amendments,” he explains in the songbook. “The officers then pressured me to somehow reference the campaign title. Having less mettle than poet Marta, I acquiesced, but I assigned those words to some unobtrusive interior vocal parts so as not to tarnish the elegance of the original text. Once the premiere performance was completed, I returned the music to its original form, which is the one included here.”

Here, Locke explains how this piece came together.

‘The Height of this Hill’

Score by Benjamin R. “Doc” Locke, professor of music | Words by Marta Evans ’06

The opening melody is an original construction, but it was reverse-engineered: I utilized 16th-century contrapuntal rules to make the melody harmonize with the opening 12 notes of “Kokosing Farewell.” The reason for this will be made clear later.

I did not start composing until after I received Marta Evans’ narrative poem, which inspired nearly every aspect of melody, motive and structure in the piece. Since each stanza ended with a repeat of the words “the height of this hill,” I made that a recurring musical motive. Because it mentions “height,” I thought it appropriate to again draw upon the opening five notes of “Kokosing Farewell” due to the daring leap of the interval of a major sixth.

The climax of the piece, in both words and music, occurs in the third stanza. Here, I combine the opening original melody in the tenor and bass voices with the complete opening melody of “Kokosing” used as a descant in the soprano and alto voices.

The poem’s mention of “story” in the third stanza reminded me of “The Thrill,” Kenyon’s alma mater, which includes the phrase “both old and young, with single tongue, unite to sing our Alma Mater’s story.” I took this as an opportunity to quote a fragment of this song (the first four notes of “The Thrill”) in the alto part on Marta’s words “find story.” Because “Philander Chase” tells the story of the founding of Kenyon College, I extended the alto part by having them sing “find story” using the first six notes of “Philander Chase.” 

For the climactic finish, I did not allow the bass voices to end on the tonic note; instead, I wrote a dramatic leap of the major-sixth interval, alluding again to the opening leap of “Kokosing Farewell.” The piano part then summarizes everything with that same motive in the final two measures.

The fifth edition of “Songs of Kenyon” is available for $10 from the Kenyon College Bookstore.