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 |
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Tim beautifully sets the evocative text of Rhode Island poet Elizabeth Wright Shippee. ... conjures the serenity of the natural world. — Ensemble Altera
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PREVIEW SCORE: Full work
1. Heritage 2. Numbers (02:18) 3. Wind (04:12) 4. Courage (7:16)
PREVIEW SCORE: Courage (this movement sold separately)
RECORDINGSong of My Heart was recorded by the internationally known Ensemble Altera, under the direction of Christopher Lowrey.
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.
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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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