A Brighter Garden
SSA choral/piano score
PEL2064-Choir and Piano
Full score and instrumental Parts
PEL2064-FS/IP
Full score and French horn and string parts
PEL2064-FS/Strings
A WORK FOR SSA CHOIR AND PIANO WITH FRENCH HORN AND OPTIONAL ORGAN OR STRINGS
With texts from both Emily Dickinson's 'There Is Another Sky' and Isaac Watts' 'We Are A Garden Walled Around', Halley creates a shimmering paradise of interweaving sound that evokes an innocent yearning for the radiance and serenity of the cloistered Garden. This is a vibrant and youthfully fresh choral setting for treble voices with piano accompaniment clear and bell-like below the soaring and intertwining melodies. French horn lends atmosphere and breadth to the spatial and emotional realms of this beautiful, truly 'brighter garden'. A paradise we would all wish to inhabit.
Commissioned by Greg and Lori Plater in memory of Roy Plater for the Calgary Girls Choir, Elaine Quilichini, Director.
Video
Notes
Included in the Pelagosmusic recording "In The Wide Awe And Wisdom", with Keramion Singers, directed by Paul Halley (PEL1006).
Composer's Notes:
"When considering Emily Dickinson’s poem “There Is Another Sky” for this commission, I came upon a revealing piece of literary criticism which highlighted the connection between Dickinson’s metric devices and the hymnody of Isaac Watts.
- 'Fatefully for American poetry, one church that thoroughly embraced Watts was the First Church in Amherst, Massachusetts, where Emily Dickinson and her family worshiped. There, as a child, the young poet was exposed to Samuel Worcesterʹs edition of Wattsʹ hymns, The Psalms and Spiritual Songs. Emily Dickinson made this same hymn meter--and the emotionally spiritual content of Wattsʹ biblical adaptations--the foundation of her poetic. A renegade in American literature, Dickinson rejected the iambic pentameter line, which had been the dominant poetic mode for hundreds of years, in favor of the hymn meter, which better suited the revolutionary nature of her expression.' -
"This led me to a search through the considerable output of Isaac Watts for a poem that spoke about the garden. I was fortunate in discovering his hymn text based on verse four of the sixteenth chapter of Song of Songs – “We are a garden walled around”. The metaphor of the walled garden from which, via Arabic, we derive the word “paradise”, seemed singularly apt for a piece centered on a poem by Emily Dickinson. The line “A little spot enclosed by grace” seemed a very succinct way of describing Dickinson’s entire life. I felt the ecstatic quality of Watts’ language brought out the underlying sensuality of Dickinson’s poem, and I felt sure she wouldn’t have minded the juxtaposition, since the sensibility of so much of Watts’ work would have felt very familiar to her." - Paul Halley, February 25th, 2009
Texts
A Brighter Garden
Words: Isaac Watts (1674 - 1748) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Music: Paul Halley (1952 - )
We are a garden walled around,
Chosen and made peculiar ground;
A little spot enclosed by grace
Out of the world’s wide wilderness.
Awake, O, heav’nly wind! and come,
Blow on this garden of perfume;
Spirit divine! descend and breathe
A gracious gale on plants beneath.
from ‘We Are A Garden Walled Around’ by Isaac Watts
There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields—
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!
‘There Is Another Sky’ by Emily Dickinson
