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TIM HARBOLD
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Song of My Heart

Movement 4  Courage available separately
          — "Absolutely lovely and inspirational, the harmonies are glorious!"
​

​Nature song cycle
for SATB chorus, flute & piano
10.5'​ - full work
3' - Mvt 4 "Courage

​Poems by Elizabeth Wright Shippee  (1915-1936)
1. Heritage  / 2. Numbers  /  3. Wind  /  4. Courage


PREVIEW SCORES BELOW
BUY MVT 4 "COURAGE"
$25 for 1 choir
BUY FULL "SONG OF MY HEART"
$65 for 1 choir

Picture
Tim beautifully sets the evocative text of Rhode Island poet Elizabeth Wright Shippee.  ... conjures the serenity of the natural world.  — Ensemble Altera
PREVIEW SCORE:  Full work
VIEW ON YOUTUBE
1. Heritage 2. Numbers (02:18)  3. Wind (04:12) 4. Courage (7:16) 
PREVIEW SCORE:  Courage    (this movement sold separately)
VIEW ON YOUTUBE

RECORDING

Song of My Heart was recorded by the internationally known Ensemble Altera, under the direction of Christopher Lowrey.
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NOTES
Elizabeth Wright Shippee of Pawtucket, RI was a lover of art, music, and nature.    In the summer of 1933, approaching her freshman year at nearby Wheaton College, Elizabeth spent the long, lazy days of summer vacation at the family farm in Foster, RI, retreating to its dense woodlands to contemplate life and write poetry.  Her evocative set of poems, Song of My Heart revels in the lessons of nature and its cycles of life and death and regenesis.  Sadly, Elizabeth herself was denied the poetic beauty she saw in aging through life's seasons.  Her poetry takes on added poignancy in the context of Elizabeth's untimely death during her senior year at Wheaton, the result of a car crash as she and friends returned to campus from a Boston Symphony Orchestra concert.   Inspired by the magic and musicality of Elizabeth's poetry, I have set four poems for choir, flute and piano.
LYRICS

Poetry by Elizabeth Wright Shippee used with permission of the Shippee family:


1. Heritage
I own no birthright greater
than to lie
here on the earth
and watch the flecks of sky
that filter through my trees,
and feel the wind

upon my face -
the soft, clean wind
that forests know-
and hear the wood-things
living on
despite my presence,
making me
one of them
by their unfrightenedness.
- I cannot name it,
but I know
the calm above,
the hush below,
this fellowship of mine with sod
is something
much akin to God.
Perhaps it is because I claim
relationship
with earth and sea
that they have deigned
that I should be
inheritant of ecstasy.


2. Numbers
It takes so many trees
to make a wood!
All these are tall and thin
and stolid-slight...
- So many ferns and rocks,
so many leaves,
so much of green and brown and grey
and shadow-light;
so much of lacy sky-scape
slipping through,
so much of sound and stillness -
Death and Life.
It takes so very much
of all things good
to make this simple wood
wherein I write.


3. Wind
The wind
runs over the tops of the trees
with swift, soft feet.
Her billowed cloak
streams, winged,
from her throat,
and the crests of my trees
are bowed at her touch
and they sigh as she passes.


4. Courage
There is a courage shining
through my trees.
Stately and tall and distant -
and so near

​that I can touch them
with an outstretched hand -
slender, demure,
and so naively grand
that my spirit soars
in sudden fear
at such great beauty...
As I watch them here,
the sun glints
through their tresses,
and the wind
scatters a bit of sunlight
on the ground.
Delicate green...
- Already creeping in
a touch of autumn
and the gayer sheen
they slowly don
to sing their swan songs in.
I would not disappoint
nor fall behind
the patient teachings
of these noble things.
Life is Abundant,
and when Death draws nigh -
​meet Him at last
with glad, new-tinted wings. 


— Elizabeth Wright Shippee,
used with permission


SEE ALSO

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