SP3009
Winter afternoons
Music: Sheena Phillips, Words: Emily Dickinson
Voicing: SATB
Performance time approx: 1m 10s
Price code: A
Complexity:
This piece is part of the set "Songs of love and longing".
The set also includes:
This piece is a depiction of the melancholy of winter afternoons. The rise and fall of the soprano line introduces light and shade, and this can be echoed by dynamic rises and falls in the lower parts. But the piece has a whole is not dramatic and should have rather a monotonic and tolling quality.
A recording by Rudsambee company of singers is available on their album bottled at source (RUBEECD003).
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons —
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes —
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are —
None may teach it — Any —
‘Tis the Seal Despair —
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air—
When it comes, the Landscape listens —
Shadows — hold their breath—
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--
Emily Dickinson
(original untitled)
Poem by Emily Dickinson used by arrangement with the publishers and the Trustees of Amherst College from THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, © 1951, 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.