Commissioned by Coro Allegro, Boston with a 2024/2025 premiere T.B.A. [Work-in-progress]
Scored for mixed chorus, French horn, and string orchestra this work sets three anti-war poems from the 17th, 18th, and early 20th centuries. The texts are in German and English.
There Will Come Soft Rains
Sara Teasdale – 1884-1933
(War Time)
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.