This Too Shall Pass

This Too Shall Pass (2009)

Duration: approx. 20 mins

In order for there to be resurrection, there must first be death. To begin to understand and take delight in love gained, one must first experience love lost. Beyond the light of day there will always be the darkness of the night.

I seem to find a simple, honest beauty in the melancholy; perhaps it is because the juxtaposition of light and dark, pain and ecstasy, love and loss seems altogether more real, more human. These four elegies (despite its lack of title, I feel the Dickinson poem to be just as elegiac as its preceding songs,) dive into the bittersweet symphony that is life, offering simultaneous consolation and cause for distress. Musically, I wish only to effectively paint the inherent beauty, devotion, sadness and fear of these poet’s words. The words of the psalmist conveys for me much of this struggle of paradox within our life journeys: Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will not be afraid… perhaps so, but I must still walk through the valley. 

This cycle consists of four songs, settings of poems that are either titled 'Elegy', or are considered elegiac in content and message. The songs may be performed individually, or together as a set in the order presented in the score.

1. Since I Lost You (text by D. H. Lawrence)

2. Speak Ye Stones (text by Goethe, trans. E. Bowring)

3. My Prime of Youth (text by Chidiock Tichborne)

4. I Shall Know Why (text by Emily Dickinson).

Range - Ab3 to Bb5

Difficulty - Advanced