Saturday, July 19, 2008

Holy and Low



"There Will Be Rest" is a choral piece written by contemporary American composer and professor Frank Ticheli to the words of a poem by Sara Teasdale. This may be the best piece I sang in my four years of choir in high school. Teasdale committed suicide in 1933, and while the poem itself can conjure images of death and depression, Ticheli deftly transforms it into an ode to the beauty of a white winter night. The choir glides through delicate dissonance and gradually ascends into a goose-bumps-inducing descant. Then the piece slows down, falling from the heavens to return to the snowy city below. Just awesome:



1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey, out of curiosity, when did you sing this? We sang this together, right...? Or am I misremembering?

(Does this mean I'm old?)