SATB a cappella, 5'15" score sample
Joy and pleasure, pleasure and joy! Spring is alive with blossoming apple orchards, happy bees, and darting hummingbirds—and our choir, perhaps a bit touched with spring fever, can’t help but tease out the humor just below the surface of Frost’s seasonal celebration. A rousing, Billings-esque interplay of voices ultimately comes together to reflect as one: “For this is love, and nothing else is love.”
"A Prayer In Spring" was developed and premiered at the Choral Chameleon Composition Institute, 2017, Brooklyn, NY.
Joy and pleasure, pleasure and joy! Spring is alive with blossoming apple orchards, happy bees, and darting hummingbirds—and our choir, perhaps a bit touched with spring fever, can’t help but tease out the humor just below the surface of Frost’s seasonal celebration. A rousing, Billings-esque interplay of voices ultimately comes together to reflect as one: “For this is love, and nothing else is love.”
"A Prayer In Spring" was developed and premiered at the Choral Chameleon Composition Institute, 2017, Brooklyn, NY.
The West Coast premiere was given by Mouthscape Contemporary Chamber Chorus on January 24, 2018 at the San Francisco Conservatory under the direction of Maestro Bryan Lin.
The Mid-West premiere was given by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chamber Singers on March 2, 2018 under the direction of Maestro Matthew Oltman. And here it is!
The Mid-West premiere was given by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chamber Singers on March 2, 2018 under the direction of Maestro Matthew Oltman. And here it is!
Poem by Robert Frost, from A Boy's Will (1913)
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.
see also:
I. Rose Pogonias (summer)
II. In Hardwood Groves (fall)
III. Stars (winter)
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