The presence of children in the chorus reflects the likely presence of children working in the Triangle Waist factory, Botkin says as members of the chorus drift back from their break and resume their places. He watches three of the twelve young teenage girls in the chorus as they come through the door together, laughing and holding soda cans. “Many people believe undocumented children worked in the factory illegally, children like those girls, and they probably died in the fire,” Botkin says. He reminds the girls gently that they can’t carry their soda into the rehearsal space, and they scurry out again. “We can’t know how many died, or who they were. We’ll never know their names. They have been silenced, so I wanted them to have a voice in the Oratorio.”

At the end of the afternoon, walking the forty-odd blocks home as darkness falls, which Botkin says he does habitually after a day of work in a windowless studio or hall, he returns to the question of familiarity and recognition in his music. “Tonal context is probably what you really hear first, and that provides a necessary footing that makes you more able to feel like you’ve heard a song before. That sets you up to experience the pattern of tension and release. This is really nuanced, and it has to do, I would say, with establishing expectations and then fulfilling or frustrating those expectations. This is what I think about all the time when I am composing. Precisely how a melody relates to its accompaniment is a complex series of tensions and releases, whether it’s a basic scale tone or, conversely, a passing tone outside the scale, or a clashing pitch, and that pattern is what makes it unique. Does that make sense?” Botkin is anxious that his explanation has been received and understood.

“By their very nature, leading tones want to be resolved,” Botkin continues after a courteous inquiry about the range of the tape recorder microphone that was clipped to his collar before the walk. “Dominant chords want to resolve to tonic chords.” He sings, “Why, oh, why can’t I?” from “Over the Rainbow.” “Ultimately, music that plays with the connection between tension and release can render a very specific and appealing pattern,” he explains. “And I think that’s what we remember best—our emotional reaction to the interplay. It’s like a novel in some ways. Or a great movie. Why do we read novels? Why do we go to the movies? The setup, the forecasting, the anticipation, and then finally a resolution. Or you can have great success with the frustration of not getting the anticipated resolution. And this all functions in fractal form, within a single phrase of music, or across a song, or a symphony, or even a body of work, and it affects us deeply, we respond emotionally.”

He has no explanation for the universal appeal of his own music, calling it a complete mystery. “Really, I can’t explain it,” he says, crossing Broadway after a pensive pause during which he remains perfectly still, eyes closed. “Some people can’t stand the endless questions in Mahler, the way there never seem to be any answers, while lots of other people find that very quality to be provocative. Maybe it has to do with early childhood experience. Or something in our brain waves. Who can say? I think Schubert would have left Beethoven in the dust if he had lived, say, another ten years. But there must be Schubert haters somewhere. I know someone who finds Mozart’s delightful problem solving to be too much like algebra. He complains that it’s all clean formulas and no mysteries. So I can’t really explain anything to you about why certain musical phrases seem to possess universal appeal, though I do have some very ordinary technical explanations, starting with rhythm, which for certain compositions is critical. You know that famous descending major third in the opening measure of Beethoven’s Fifth? What’s really thematic there, I think, are the upbeat of the three eighth notes followed by the fermata in the next bar. Dum-dum-dum DUM.”