An End: 2. He was born in Spring was premiered by Cascadian Chorale April 22 and 23, 2017.

Overview

An End is based on Christina Rossetti’s poem by the same name, written in March 1849 and first published in 1859 in The Germ and later reprinted in her Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862).

Composer’s Corner

The Poem

When I initially encountered this poem, the first line sparked a very strong emotional response that drew me into the whole poem. While the poet’s original subject matter was “summer love”, I was captivated by another, more literal interpretation: the tragic death of a baby born in Spring, and the awful emotional turmoil for those left behind. I wanted to capture these emotions in music, and so I very quickly finished the first movement, which corresponds to the first stanza of the original poem.

At this point, I had an interesting aesthetic quandary—I’d already captured the deep emotional hurt, and yet I was only a third of the way through the poem. Too much of the same emotion undermines the impact one can create, so a good contrast was in order. Unfortunately, there’s not much in the original poem that would provide this contrast, so I struck on an interesting idea—what if I took all of the positive and happier lines from the poem, and omit anything sad? That is how I created the text for the second movement. It functions much like a fond remembrance of the life that was taken away.

The third movement is essentially the second and third stanzas of the original poem, starting from “On the last warm summer day”. Like the first movement, the third movement is rather intense, and I didn’t feel that it made for a satisfactory ending. This observation led me to reprise the first three lines of the poem for the last movement, which functions much like a musical coda. The music here is very sad yet moving towards an acceptance (at least until the despair expressed at the very end).

• Lyric
• Original Poem

An End

1. Love, strong as Death is dead (SSATBB)
Love, strong as Death is dead, dead, dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head,
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.

Love, strong as Death is dead, dead, dead.
Come, let us make his bed.

2. He was born in Spring (SATB)
He was born in Spring among the flowers.
A green turf was his bed
In the quiet evening hours.

Sit we by and sing among the flowers
On this last warm summer day
In the quiet evening hours.

So, sit we by and sing,
Among the flowers,
In the quiet evening hours.

He was born in Spring among the flowers.
A green turf was his bed
In the quiet evening hours.

3. On the last warm summer day (SSATBB, incidental T solo)
On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn’s twilight cold and grey.

On the last warm summer day,
Sing we by his grave and sing.
He is gone away. He is gone.

To few chords, sad and low,
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass,
Shadow-veiled eyes, as the years pass
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.

4. Epilogue (SSSSAATBB, i.e. SSATBB but with both S divsi and A divisi)
Love, strong as death is Love, strong as death is…
Come, let us make his bed
Among the flowers,
Among the dying flowers:
Dead, dead.

—Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), revisions copyright © 2011 by Fraley Music, Inc.

An End

Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head;
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.

He was born in the Spring,
And died before the harvesting:
On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn twilight cold and grey.
Sit we by his grave, and sing
He is gone away.

To few chords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.

—Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

The Music

The first movement, Love, strong as Death is dead, is a dialog of grief between husband and wife, each taking turns comforting the other, with SSA as the wife and TBB as the husband. This section contrasts minor intervals and diminished chords of the grief with major chords and suspensions of the comforter. The grief is also expressed in quasi-cannon, mimicking waves of grief.

The second movement, He was born in Spring, is a contrast to the first movement. This movement is scored for SATB, is upbeat with lots of movement, and features a counterpoint that supports these positive emotions. It is written in ABA form, with the B section written in a rolling 5/4.

The third movement, On the last warm Summer day, is the funeral. Like the first movement, it is scored for SSATBB, but this time the groupings tend to be interleaved: S1AB1 and S2TB2, while on the whole, being rather homophonic. Harmonically, a lot of chromaticism is used, especially in the build-up to the climax “He is gone”.

As mentioned above, the last movement, Epilogue, functions as a musical coda, recalling and reusing material from the previous movements. Of particular interest is the harmonic motion, which alternates each measure between C Major and E-flat Major. This harmonic shifting results in a very melancholy melody—as it constantly struggles to keep its footing, only to lose out at the very end.

Listen to An End while viewing a perusal score:.