Instrumentation: SATB Choir with Brass Quintet
Year Composed: 2019
Initially written for a call for scores, this is a setting of “Winter-Solitude” by Canadian poet Archibald Lampman. It is a solemn work, evoking the feeling of awe and introspection that comes from observing a beautiful view of the cityscape framed with the natural beauty of the surrounding landscape while hiking on a cold winter’s day.
The text is:
I saw the city’s towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;
Beyond them a hill of softest mistiest green,
With naught but frost and the coming night between,
And a long thin cloud above it the clour of August rye.
I saw in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee
Where the thin wind stung my cheeks,
And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks,
Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.
And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone
As I sat reflecting there,
In a world so mystically fair,
So deathly silent – I so utterly alone.