PROGRAM NOTE
The invitation to compose a short work for the Cornell University Glee Club presented some special delights, of which the deep, beautiful sound of an all-male choir ranging from tenor down to low bass was the most immediate and palpable. I selected Shakespeare’s immortal Sonnet 73 in no small part because I found myself drawn to the haunting coloring suggested by its imagery as it reflects on the inevitable ravages of time and impending loss of a loved one. To my mind these emotion-filled hues suggested sound, and the sound traditionally associated with the all-male glee club seemed especially suitable.
To set music to great poetry is a privilege. A gift. But can music reciprocate in kind? The answer (as well as the question) revealed itself as I was composing this work. I found myself relishing music’s ability to linger on a pivotal word, elongate a key phrase, highlight a shifting mood, reiterate, extend, caress, dissolve… The pliable nature of time in music is a composer’s special luxury, and in my setting I strove to pay homage to Shakespeare’s sublime words by lifting them off the page and into the realm of sound and time.
At the request of James Kallembach, director of the University of Chicago Choruses, I later adapted the work for S.A.T.B. chorus.
Text of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
INFORMATION
Commissioned by the Cornell University Glee Club
Scott A. Tucker, director
Premiere: January 24, 2012
Cornell University, Ithaca NY
S.A.T.B. version commissioned by James Kallembach, director
University of Chicago Choruses
Premiere: February 23, 2013
Rockefeller Chapel, The University of Chicago, Chicago IL
Duration: 5’30
SHEET MUSIC
Available from your favorite sheet music seller, or directly from Theodore Presser.