SMU Meadows School of the Arts and the Corsicana Artist & Writer Residency co-presented the world premiere of A Rural Requiem; or, The Great Silence, an evening-length work by Texas-born composer Cody Criswell-Badillo, on Tuesday, February 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Caruth Auditorium, performed by the contemporary ensemble earspace, under the direction of Richard Drehoff.
Scored for chamber ensemble and unfolding across 11 movements, A Rural Requiem; or, The Great Silence invites audiences into a deeply personal meditation on memory, silence and transformation across the rural Texas landscape. It maps the liturgical form of the traditional requiem mass onto the textures, melodies, and silences of the Texas plains. Instead of Latin chant, the work weaves together Texas folk songs, Baptist hymns, border corridos, and shape-note singing, creating a mosaic that honors both personal lineage and collective memory.
The work was conceived during Criswell-Badillo’s fall 2024 Corsicana Artist & Writer Residency at 100 West, where he curated the folk songs and thematic framework that would become the backbone of the Requiem. Further development continued in Corsicana at The Writers House during summer and fall 2025, where Criswell-Badillo refined the text and structure of the 11-movement score, integrating earlier compositions and fragments of past work to create a layered musical autobiography.
There’s this tendency to think Texas is big. But my piece is about how lonely rural life is. I’m going for something vulnerable and intimate. - Criswell-Badillo
A Rural Requiem; or, The Great Silence is Criswell-Badillo’s most personal and large-scale work to date—a piece that transcends nostalgia to confront belonging, disappearance, and the complex beauty of rural identity. The 12-member ensemble earspace, known for its genre-fluid and adventurous performances, is uniquely suited to Criswell-Badillo’s sound world and bridges the intimacy of chamber music with the earthiness of folk idioms.
The premiere is primarily underwritten by SMU Meadows School of the Arts, with support from Algur H. Meadows Dean Samuel S. Holland, and reflects a broader partnership with Criswell Badillo that includes student mentorship and educational programming with SMU Meadows’ music composition program. Following its world premiere, A Rural Requiem; or, The Great Silence will receive a second performance in Baltimore, Maryland in October 2026.
Cody Criswell-Badillo is a Texas-born composer whose music explores the intersection of folk traditions, memory and geography. His works have been performed nationally and internationally, recognized for their lyrical depth and cultural introspection. A Rural Requiem; or, The Great Silence represents the culmination of years of reflection on the soundscape and soul of his home state.
