Winter Songs
For SATB choir and piano. Duration - 10 minutes.
Winter Songs is a set of four choir pieces of moderate difficulty setting seasonal poetry by four American women. The goal was to give choir directors a secular programming option for winter or holiday programs that also celebrates both well-known and undersung female poets. All poems are public domain. The pieces are meant to be evocative and listenable, and approachable for a wide variety of singers.
“Bleak Weather” (Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1850-1919)
Dear love, where the red lillies blossomed and grew,
The white snows are falling;
And all through the wood, where I wandered with you,
The loud winds are calling;
And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune,
Neath the elm—you remember,
Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June,
And left us—December.
Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun,
And false in the shadows.
He has found new delights, in the land where he's gone,
Greener woodlands and meadows.
What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea,
Let it drift on the heather!
We can sing through it all; I have you—you have me,
And we’ll laugh at the weather.
The old year may die, and a new one be born
That is bleaker and colder;
But it cannot dismay us; we dare it—we scorn,
For love makes us bolder.
Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea,
Thou friend in fair weather;
But here is a song sung, that’s fuller of glee,
By two warm hearts together.
“November Night” (Adelaie Crapsey, 1878-1914)
Listen. .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
“Like Brooms of Steel” (Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886)
Like Brooms of Steel
The Snow and Wind
Had swept the Winter Street -
The House was hooked
The Sun sent out
Faint Deputies of Heat -
Where rode the Bird
The Silence tied
His ample - plodding Steed
The Apple in the Cellar snug
Was all the one that played.
“Winter Sun” (Sara Teasdale, 1884-1933)
There was a bush with scarlet berries,
And there were hemlocks heaped with snow,
With a sound like surf on long sea-beaches
They took the wind and let it go.
The hills were shining in their samite,
Fold after fold they flowed away;
"Let come what may," your eyes were saying,
"At least we two have had to-day."