Julia Wolfe on Anthracite Fields: Research, Singing, Highlighters, and Narrative

The history of the anthracite region in northeastern Pennsylvania is a history shaped twice over — by geology and by human hands. Deep underground, coal seams lie buried in fractured rock, the slow metamorphosis of organic matter under heat and pressure over hundreds of millions of years, constantly renewing. Then, in the early nineteenth century, people rediscovered it, and what followed were mines, railways, and immigrants from Germany, England, Italy, Ireland and beyond. This modest stretch of land, in a sense, set a nation alight.

But if you drive through the region today, what you see is a landscape of open-pit mines, culm banks, and shrinking towns passing in and out of view. The population is disappearing fast. But the culm banks are still there. And so are many of the miners’ descendants.

Julia Wolfe walked into this place with her notebooks.

Following the UK premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields with the BBC Philharmonic and the BBC Singers in Manchester, Julia Wolfe spoke with The Riff Magazine about the making of this work, how music tells history, and her deep connection to historical subjects.

The following interview was conducted online and has been edited for clarity.

Julia Wolfe (right) at the premiere in Manchester © Chris Payne

WY=Wu Yiyao

JW=Julia Wolfe

From Research to Sound

Anthracite Fields was originally composed for the Bang on a Can All-Stars — the six-player amplified chamber group Wolfe founded, who tour internationally with local choirs. Later, conductor Teddy Abrams proposed adapting it into a full orchestral version, one he could bring into the coal mining communities surrounding his orchestra in Louisville, Kentucky. A chamber work thus became an hour-long orchestral score, and the Manchester performance is its latest destination.

WY: You did an enormous amount of research for this piece. At what point does all of that stop being research and start becoming sound?

JW: I feel like I’m perpetually researching. But first, I find the history that’s interesting. In this case, it’s the coal mining community in northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s close to where I grew up. Philadelphia is a big city — many people know Philadelphia — then there’s the suburbs, then small towns. I grew up in a small town. If you keep going north, you reach this area — the anthracite region. It was an incredible journey. I went there and interviewed miners and their families. The industry began around the turn of the century — they found this coal, and a huge industry built up. You could say this anthracite coal fueled the entire nation.

I talk to people, do interviews, watch documentaries, read lots of books.

WY: But the material must pile up.

JW: Yes, sometimes I’ve had ten notebooks. As you’re researching, different subjects emerge. Like the breaker boys — these young boys working in the mine. You think, “What a crazy history that is.” So I go back to these notebooks and highlight them in different colors — maybe the boys are all green. Then there’s the subject of political action — workers uniting, trying to push for change, for safety laws. You pick a color. And then I have these groups of material. And the language itself is so rich. It almost sings itself.

WY: You mentioned a speech — the third movement?

JW: Yes, John L. Lewis — he was the head of the United Mine Workers union. The way he spoke had this kind of intensity. He would say, “If you must grind up...” — his voice had almost a glissando, a slide in it. And then it becomes easy. I start singing the words. I sing everything. Every note of this piece, I sing to myself when I’m developing it. But I definitely start with the text, and then I begin to sing it and shape it. One movement at a time, sometimes going back and forth. So the order is: from research to text, to singing, to orchestrating.

Singing, Narrative, History

There is a persistent tension in Wolfe’s work: the words are telling a story, and the music is telling something else. Her vocal and instrumental works feel very different from one another, and the boundary between the two is not always clear — sometimes language itself becomes sound.

WY: “Breaker Boys” has this repetitive, chanting quality — almost like a work song. Was that intentional?

JW: I like that you say that. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I think it’s in my background. I love the music of Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie — there are various American folk figures who wrote songs like that. So it’s definitely in my consciousness. What I was thinking when I wrote “Breaker Boys” was, I started with this one rhyme. It’s almost like a song, but more of a rhyme, from the region. I found it in a book: “Mickey picks slate, early and late. That was the poor little breaker boy’s fate.” It’s about a breaker boy named Mickey. His mother goes to find him or wait for him, and he doesn’t come out. Very sad, very dark — but a lot of children’s rhymes are dark.

WY: Children were such a huge part of the workforce back then.

JW: It was complicated, because they did outlaw it. There’s no more child labor like this now. But at the time, even families felt, “We can make at least a little more money if our ten-year-old goes into the mines.” So it was very complex. You can’t simply blame the evil mine owner. There were problems with that, but families were desperate for income. It’s a bit heartbreaking, really — these boys working in the mines, a very unhealthy environment. But a very significant part of the history.

WY: How does music narrate history? Through text?

JW: Making something into a piece of music is very different. There’s a kind of emotional telling of a history. So it’s not just the facts. Some books are also not just facts, but when you start to sing a history, it’s different — it’s a very human kind of expression, and I think it’s very beautiful. You communicate more than just words. I always think of the orchestra as the vehicle for emotion. The words tell you something, but the music also tells you something. That’s very interesting to me — the energy, the power of music.

WY: You mean the physical force of it?

JW: Yes. But the thing I love about music is that you can’t completely explain it. What is it that’s happening to you? You hear these harmonies, these rhythms, these energies, and you feel something — and I don’t know why we feel something. As a musician, that’s probably why I’m a musician. I feel something when I’m creating and writing. I suppose if I feel something, maybe someone else will feel something too.

Conductor John Storgårds and BBC Philharmonic © Chris Payne

WY: Your narrative pieces and your instrumental work feel very different — the instrumental pieces lean more towards texture and timbre, they’re more physical, more of a pure sonic experience. Do these two sides come from different creative impulses?

JW: They’re connected. It’s definitely different when you have text. I love working with text. In some ways it’s more — I don’t want to say easier — but more fluid. If I have a text, I know where to start, I know where it’s going. It gives you a starting point. Sometimes in rehearsal when the singers aren’t there and I just hear the orchestra — that’s actually quite interesting. It has a life of its own. So I think even in the vocal pieces, there’s that physicality you’re describing — that textural physicality — but it’s not as upfront as when there are no voices. I think they’re related.

WY: In a piece like this, where does narrative end and abstraction begin?

JW: Once you start telling a story, the listener’s attention follows the unfolding of that story. It dominates. But sometimes, even in these pieces with text, parts become textural. For example, there’s a movement called “Flowers” in this piece, about women beautifying their homes with gardens. And there’s a moment where it goes abstract. They’re singing “We all have flowers, we have gardens,” but suddenly you reach a point where they’re singing “flo-wer” — and it’s no longer a story. It’s a textural experience. Narrative and abstraction — they’re intertwined.

WY: You’ve returned to labor history across multiple works. Where does that drive come from?

JW: When I went to university, I had no thought of studying music at all. I was seventeen, and I went to a small liberal arts program at the University of Michigan. I was very interested in social sciences — we studied labor history and how people work. I had that interest as a teenager. Then I got into music almost by accident — I’d studied piano, I could read music. But I wasn’t really composing. I set the text aside. I did some theatre projects, but I thought, “I really want to understand how instruments work, how sound works, how harmony works” — to develop my own language. It wasn’t until later that I came back to this very passionate interest in how we work and how we treat each other at work. I’ve always been at least politically conscious in my life. So it was a very natural return. But as a young person, I started with this really strong interest in history — how we make mistakes, how we repeat them over and over, and how we try to move forward. That interest was there from the start.

One Work, Several Resonances

Anthracite Fields is not Wolfe’s only work rooted in labor history. Fire in My Mouth deals with the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York; Steel Hammer is about a railway worker. Similar themes recur throughout her output. Performing this piece about American coal mining communities in Manchester adds a layer not written into the score — Manchester is a city with its own coal fields, its own industrial memory.

The premiere of Anthracite Fields in Manchester was held at Bridgewater Hall © Chris Payne

WY: And now you’re performing this piece in Manchester — another coal city.

JW: I love that — when there’s a resonance between a place and the work. That’s very interesting to me.

WY: Do you think the audience here will respond differently?

JW: It’ll be interesting to see. It’s happened in places where I didn’t expect it. We did this piece in Los Angeles — and I thought I probably wouldn’t get any feedback from the audience. But actually, a woman came up to me and said, “My grandfather is on your list,” because there’s a moment where we’re chanting names — “John... Big John” — and it was an unusual spelling. So even there. The industry was so vast, in England and in the States, that it touched a lot of families and a lot of lives. People always find some connection to it, even if it’s a different kind of work. I love that. I find it really interesting to connect with people and their personal histories.