Commissioned by Coro Allegro, Boston and premiered on March 9, 2025. Audio & video coming soon & the score and parts are being prepared for publication.
Instrumentation: Mixed chorus, French horn, and string orchestra.
Duration: 28 minutes, ca.
THERE WILL COME SOFT RAINS (2025)
For mixed chorus, solo French horn, and strings by Kareem Roustom
There Will Come Soft Rains was commissioned by Coro Allegro through a gift from John C. Brown.
“Dedicated to my life partner, Tom Regan, and the memory of my parents, Donald E. and Betty D. Brown. Throughout their lives, Donald and Betty cherished the gift of music. They empathized with the powerless and advocated for the victims of the powerful.”
John C. Brown
PROGRAM NOTES
Have we become a nation that no longer listens to poets? (Were we ever?). There Will Come Soft Rains, whose title comes from the poem by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) is an anti-war work for choir, solo French Horn, and string orchestra. The four texts set to music in this work span a period of two thousand years and all, essentially, communicate the same message: when we wage war against others we are waging war against ourselves. Teasdale’s poem, though in an oblique way, warns of the grave dangers of disconnecting ourselves from nature. This disconnection, through endless economic growth and expansion, as well as the monetization of everything, is in itself an act of war on nature.
“Shall the sword devour for ever?” is an oft quoted biblical passage (II Samuel 2:26). This chapter describes the war between the houses of David and Saul. The Israelites of Saul’s army, commanded by Abner, were defeated by David’s men. As Abner fled the battlefield he was chased relentlessly by Asahel, one of David’s men. Abner stopped and warned Asahel, “Stop chasing me! Why should I strike you down? How could I look your brother Joab in the face?” But Asahel maintained his pursuit only to be killed by Abner. Seeing their brother fall, Joab and Abishai now pursued Abner until they reached a hilltop where Abner was joined by reinforcements. It was at that point that Abner, realizing that there would only be more bloodshed if fighting continued, called out, “Shall the sword devour for ever? Knowest thou not that it will be bitterness in the latter end? How long before you order your men to stop pursuing their fellow Israelites?” Realizing the futility and terrible costs of continued fighting, especially with his own kin, Joab blew his trumpet and all the troops came to a halt.
Though DNA testing would later prove otherwise about humankind’s common ancestry, the eighteenth-century Methodist minister, Joseph Benson, commented on this passage:
“By nation and religion; descended from one common ancestor of Israel, and worshipping one and the same God. How forcible is this argument, even if applied to all men, and how ought it to induce all kings and princes to avoid all wars as much as possible, forasmuch as all mankind are brethren, and made of one blood.”
Tränen des Vaterlandes is a poem Andreas Gryphius (1616 – 1664) which was written after the first nineteen years of the devastating Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). One of the most destructive conflicts in European history, the estimated casualties are thought to have been between 4.5 to 8 million. As a youth, Gryphius experienced the impact of the early years of the Thirty Years’ War. He was orphaned by the age of seven and his home town Glogau, (in what is now western Poland), was the site of brutal forced conversions, or expulsions, of protestants by Catholic troops. Gryphius’ stepfather took him to Poland shortly thereafter, where religious tolerance was practiced. Tränen des Vaterlandes was written there by Gryphius at the age of twenty.
Coro Allegro member and the commissioner of this work, John Brown, suggested this poem to me early on in the process. Gryphius’s terse and unsentimental language, describes the horrors he had likely witnessed first-hand, and the ultimate cost of war and violence; our souls, and our humanity. As Cicero wrote in his Epistle to Servius Sulpicius Rufus that in war all outcomes are miserable; “victory itself, which in the case of civil wars is always offensive.”
Annie Fields (1834 – 1915) was a Boston based writer, poet, editor, and philanthropist. Her poem The Wild Endive appeared in the November 1861 issue of The Atlantic. By that point in the American civil war several major battles had taken place, including the Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Virginia, the Battle of Wilson’s Creek in Missouri, as well as the beginning of the blockades of Confederate port cities. The enthusiasm of the North at the outset of the war had faded, especially after the humiliating defeat at Bull Run, and as news of significant casualties was returning to the home front. The Wild Endive is a less patriotic poem than Fields’ other war time poems such Cedar Mountain. This lack of misplaced patriotic zeal, and her reliance on the deeply innate need for humas to look to nature for solace (or answers?) spoke to me. The soldier depicted in the poem could be in any army (true empathy requires us to recognize all participants in war as victims of the circumstance). This soldier seeks solace in a wild weed growing on the side of the road, which gives him, and thereby us, hope.
Sara Teasdale’s There Will Come Soft Rains was written early in the spring of 1918. This was during the fourth year of World War I, and at the time of the flu pandemic. Here again, Teasdale rings similar alarm bells as so many before her have. When I first read it, the poem’s simplicity only served to emphasized the shock of the implications of its final lines. The poem speaks for itself, especially in our time of self-inflicted environmental degradation. To constantly commodify our environment, seeking to ‘monetize’ everything that can be sold, is also a form of war. From stirp mining to deforestation and to the everyday madness of endless landscaping of lawns, we are being sold ‘victory’ at a terrible cost to ourselves and to our children. Nature, Teasdale warns us, will continue with or without us.
What I have to say about these texts can only be expressed in feelings as I am at a loss to explain them in my own words. So, I rely on the words of others whose talents lie there. In Wim Wenders’ 1987 film, Wings of Desire, an old man, while ambling about the still bombed out areas of Berlin, contemplates the nature of man’s proclivity for war. He asks, “What is it about peace that its inspiration is not enduring?” Perhaps we might find the answer if we start listening to poets (again?) and to consider how our everyday actions affect the world around us.
Kareem Roustom