A Glimmering Girl

Description

A Glimmering Girl (2011)

Yeats’s “The Song of Wandering Aengus”

SATB unaccompanied 3′
Premiere—Dedicated to Elizabeth Pauly and the Choirs at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, 5/12
Published by Galaxy Music. Distributed by Canticle.
Click here for audio and pdf preview.

Text

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

–Wm. Butler Yeats “The Song of Wandering Aengus”
From The Wind Among the Reeds, 1899

Program Note

A Glimmering Girl is a lyrical setting of Yeats’s “The Song of Wandering Aengus.” Aengus was a god of love, youth and poetic inspiration in Irish mythology, The work was composed for my friend Dr. Elizabeth Pauly and the Choir at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, which gave the premiere in May 2013. Composition of this work was supported in part by the American Composers Forum through the 2013 McKnight Composer Fellowship Program.