winter

SATB and soli quartet

One of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had is silently watching a quiet snowfall. It seems to me that there is something about it which puts us directly in touch with our creator. The terrain and the air itself seem to come alive in their metamorphosis from trees, grass and sky to something nearly devoid of color and almost unrecognizable as its former self—an utterly pure world with snowflakes softly falling to rest on the earth. The text, an amalgamation of poems by E.E. Cummings all created in awe of nature, seemed to capture perfectly the beauty of silently falling snow.

This piece 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.

winter was commissioned by the Northern Arizona University Shrine of the Ages Choir (Dr. Edith Copley, conductor) and received its premiere December 4, 2003. It is dedicated with love and gratitude to Ed, Brion, Jessica and Eric Grant.

The Text

Adapted by the composer from poetry by E.E. Cummings (1894-1962)

snow…snow
beautiful is the unmeaning of silently falling
everywhere
snow

two faces at a dark window
this father and his child are watching snowflakes
falling

falling over time space doom dream
while floats the whole perhapsless mystery of paradise

mind without soul may blast some universe to might have been,
and stop ten thousand stars
but not one heartbeat of this child;
nor shall even prevail a million questionings
against the silence of his mother’s smile
—whose only secret all creation sings