Leave My Heart Its Songs

Commissioned by and dedicated to the Smith College Chorus
Joseph Baldwin, conductor

G. Schirmer / Dale Warland Choral Series (click to purchase)

Leave My Heart Its Songs is a setting of a sonnet (“To a friend”) taken from Amy Lowell’s collection A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. This particular collection of poetry has resonated with me on many levels, and it has been the source for much of my recent choral music. When Joseph Baldwin spoke to me about his desire for a beautiful new work for the Smith College Chorus, I immediately went back to Lowell for inspiration.

The text is evocative and desperate, almost cynical, but it speaks of a real fear one finds in relationship: that the person one trusts and knows may one day change course as love and passion wither. Lowell’s expression is one of adolescent dreaming, “O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!” While it is perhaps a dream viewed through rose-coloured glasses, I cannot help but marvel at the fervor with which Lowell clings to this child-like illusion of permanence. It is the most natural naïvete: who among us has not wished for a passionate night that might never end?

This work was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Smith College Chorus and their conductor­—and my dear friend—Joseph Baldwin.

(Amy Lowell, "To a friend"):

I ask but one thing of you, only one, 
        That always you will be my dream of you; 
        That never shall I wake to find untrue 
    All this I have believed and rested on, 
    Forever vanished, like a vision gone 
        Out into the night. Alas, how few 
        There are who strike in us a chord we knew 
    Existed, but so seldom heard its tone 
        We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. 
    The world is full of rude awakenings 
        And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, 
    Yet still our human longing vainly clings 
        To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. 
        O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!

Commissioned by and dedicated to the Smith College Chorus
Joseph Baldwin, conductor

G. Schirmer / Dale Warland Choral Series (click to purchase)

Leave My Heart Its Songs is a setting of a sonnet (“To a friend”) taken from Amy Lowell’s collection A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass. This particular collection of poetry has resonated with me on many levels, and it has been the source for much of my recent choral music. When Joseph Baldwin spoke to me about his desire for a beautiful new work for the Smith College Chorus, I immediately went back to Lowell for inspiration.

The text is evocative and desperate, almost cynical, but it speaks of a real fear one finds in relationship: that the person one trusts and knows may one day change course as love and passion wither. Lowell’s expression is one of adolescent dreaming, “O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!” While it is perhaps a dream viewed through rose-coloured glasses, I cannot help but marvel at the fervor with which Lowell clings to this child-like illusion of permanence. It is the most natural naïvete: who among us has not wished for a passionate night that might never end?

This work was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Smith College Chorus and their conductor­—and my dear friend—Joseph Baldwin.

(Amy Lowell, "To a friend"):

I ask but one thing of you, only one, 
        That always you will be my dream of you; 
        That never shall I wake to find untrue 
    All this I have believed and rested on, 
    Forever vanished, like a vision gone 
        Out into the night. Alas, how few 
        There are who strike in us a chord we knew 
    Existed, but so seldom heard its tone 
        We tremble at the half-forgotten sound. 
    The world is full of rude awakenings 
        And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground, 
    Yet still our human longing vainly clings 
        To a belief in beauty through all wrongs. 
        O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!