Spring

SATB, a cappella

We are stewards of the world around us and, in “There will come soft rain,” the poet Sara Teasdale takes that notion and breaks it to us gently. In the first half of the poem she delicately paints a beautiful picture of a rainy night before she turns it around to kindly remind us to take care of the world we live in. I adapted another Teasdale poem, “Twilight,” into the piece in order to fill out the imagery a bit.  It served to bring a first person point of view into the musical narrative and personalizes her reminder to use that nature laughs last.

It is one of four a cappella works which uses the seasons as its inspiration and ends on the word “falling.”  They can be performed starting on any of the movements as long as the cycle progresses in the cyclical order of the seasons.

Spring was commissioned by the Brownsburg High School Madrigals (Debi Prather, conductor) and is dedicated to Kelly Patrick Lusk.

The Text

Adapted by the composer from two poems by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)

The cold spring rain is falling:
Out in the lonely tree
A bird is calling, calling,
Calling slowly over the earth
The wings of night are falling, falling.

There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plumtrees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war,
Not one will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

My heart like the bird is calling.
The cold spring rain is falling.

Performed by the Sunday Night Singers
(Mike McCullough, conductor).