Product Description:
PDF score of Hope.
Please note: 10 copy minimum. Please purchase one copy per member of your choir.
Program Note:
Hope is a new setting of Emily Dickinson’s famous poem Hope Is the Thing With Feathers for two-part choir and piano that can be performed in SA, TB, or Treble and Bass voicings. A friend approached me to write for her church’s children’s choir, and, while this wasn’t for them, it led me to write something that introduces less experienced choirs to new music through the inclusion of aleatoric (chance) elements and text painting, expanding the harmonic colors with the accompanist and the soloist. Dickinson’s poem speaks to hope as an ever-present undercurrent. We live in a turbulent time where finding hope amidst it all can feel difficult, and this setting amplifies how finding a crumb of hope, however fleeting, can be a powerful reminder that we can effect change.
Instrumentation:
Two Part (SA/TB/Treble Bass) choir & Piano
Recording:
Score:
Text:
Hope is the thing with feathers (254)
Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.
– Emily Dickinson
