David John Olsen's "We're All Pharaohs When We Die," written for soprano and piano, is part of the AIDS Quilt Songbook. This project was started by baritone and AIDS sufferer William Parker, who invited composers to contribute songs in response to the spread of AIDS, as a way both to create an artistic literature of responses to AIDS and to raise funds to combat it. Olsen's text is a poem by Tess Gallagher from her book Moon Crossing Bridge. The poem begins impersonally, with what seems like a philosophical statement about death, but soon reveals a first-person narrator who is coming to terms with the reality of death. Olsen's music underscores the text's emotions, as the opening music is free of emotional displays, with a quiet atonal melody and spare accompaniment. The emotional pitch of the music steadily rises, however, until the soprano engages in hysterics beside the coffin and the piano rings out with bell-like chords. The music moves back to the calmness of the opening at the end, but here it sounds mysterious rather than dispassionate. Olsen's response to the text is consistently illuminating, and he provides convincing music to depict this personal journey.

© Andrew Lindemann Malone, All Music Guide