WHEN MUSIC SOUNDS
for SATB choir (2022)
Duration: 3:30'
Awarded the 2024 Diane Loomer Award in Composition by Choral Canada, and selected as winner in the Emerging Composer Division of the 2023 Edwin Kissinger Choral Composition Prize.
This piece sets a text by Walter de la Mare. The piece is an appreciation and celebration of the beauty and wonder of music. With hints of nostalgia injected in its folk-like tune, my intention was for the piece to be enjoyed both in its performance and amongst the audience.
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.
When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
And from Time’s woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.
Selected as winner in the Emerging Composer Division of the 2023 Edwin Fissinger Choral Composition Prize, this is a recording of a performance by the North Dakota State University Choir, under the artistic direction of Dr. Jo Ann Miller.
Below is a recording of the Mississauga Summer Chorale, by whom the piece was commissioned and premiered in the summer of 2022.
Scores available for purchase through Cypress Choral Music.