Songs of Joy and Refuge
I. Joy
II. Refuge
AUDIO
Clerestory and the Young Women's Chorus of San Francisco
DURATION
4’
INSTRUMENTATION
SATB (div.) young adult or adult choir a cappella
POET
Sara Teasdale
YEAR COMPOSED
2012
COMMISSIONER
Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir
ORDERING SCORES
This work is published as a digital score with a performance license. The pricing is based on the number of singers in a choir:
- $50: up to 20 singers
- $100: 21-50 singers
- $150: 51-79 singers
- $200: 80+ singers
- Click on the link to email Inkjar Publishing Company
- Specify the number of singers and the name of your choir.
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PERUSAL SCORE
Click here
TEXTS
I. Joy
I am wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
Now at last I can die!
I am sandaled with wind and with flame,
I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live!
II. Refuge
From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.
For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.
PROGRAM NOTES
Songs of Joy and Refuge was commissioned to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir (Robert Geary, Artistic Director). When Bob approached me with this project, I immediately thought of the exhilaration of singing and sought to find texts that captured this feeling. In my search, I found two lovely poems by the 20th Century American poet Sara Teasdale (1884-1933), each of which illustrates a different aspect of singing. In Joy, Teasdale expresses happiness through the action of singing, whereas in Refuge, Teasdale relies on singing to lift her spirits. Together, these two poems perfectly express to me why we sing.
-S.G.
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HELIOS • 4’30” • 2 tpts/flugelhorns, hn, tbn, tba
PROGRAM NOTES
In Greek mythology, Helios was the god of the sun. His head wreathed in light, he daily drove a chariot drawn by four horses (in some tales, the horses are winged; in others, they are made of fire) across the sky. At the end of each day’s journey, he slept in a golden boat that carried him on the Okeanos River (a fresh water stream that encircled the flat earth) back to his rising place. The cyclic journey of Helios is depicted in this short work for brass quintet. The first half is fast-paced and very energetic, while the second half is slow and serene, representing day and night.
-S.G.