About
Inspired by his friendship with Sister Helen Prejean (which began with Heggie’s opera Dead Man Walking, based on Sister Helen’s book of the same title) and his own struggle with spirituality, Heggie commissioned the texts for this cycle from Sister Helen. As Heggie describes in his Program Note for the song cycle:
“…I asked her [Sister Helen] about her own sense of what “spirituality” means. (It is a constant struggle for me, personally.) She answered that at one point in her life she’d had to throw away all the ‘stuff’ she’d been told she needs…She went to the deepest waters of her being, and it was there she found the core of her spirituality: the deepest desire of her heart.”
The song cycle is comprised of four sections, beginning with a flute solo, which Heggie has named “The Call.”
–Christie Finn
Songs
More is Required
Jake Heggie
Sister Helen Prejean
Song Collection: The Deepest Desire
Love
Jake Heggie
Sister Helen Prejean
Song Collection: The Deepest Desire
I Catch on Fire
Jake Heggie
Sister Helen Prejean
Song Collection: The Deepest Desire
The Deepest Desire
Jake Heggie
Sister Helen Prejean
Song Collection: The Deepest Desire
Primary Colors
Jake Heggie
Sister Helen Prejean
Song Collection: The Deepest Desire
Recordings

The Deepest Desire
(Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland and Jake Heggie)
2006

Flesh and Stone: Songs of Jake Heggie
(Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson, Jake Heggie, Sister Helen Prejean, Gene Scheer and Anne Sexton)
Sheet Music
The Deepest Desire
Composer(s): Jake Heggie
Song(s): 1. More is Required
2. Love
3. I Catch on Fire
4. The Deepest Desire
5. Primary Colors