Product Description:
PDF score of To the heart that knows fire
Please note: 10 copy minimum. Please purchase one copy per member of your choir.
Please note: 10 copy minimum. Please purchase one copy per member of your choir.
Program Note:
To the heart that knows fire speaks to both loss and rebirth. Setting Emily Pauline Johnson’s Fire-Flowers, this work depicts the fires that we experience both physically, as each year our world demonstrates more of the devastating effects of climate change, and mentally, as we traverse grief and pain in our lives. Though we get to know these desolating fires intimately – to the point that we are nearly engulfed in flames – we persist. Out of scorched earth springs new growth and with it hope and renewal.
Instrumentation:
SSAATTBB unaccompanied choir
Recording:
Score:
Text:
Fire-Flowers
And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
It hides the scars with almost human hands.
And only to the heart that knows of grief,
Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
And life revives, and blossoms once again.
- Emily Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)
And only where the forest fires have sped,
Scorching relentlessly the cool north lands,
A sweet wild flower lifts its purple head,
And, like some gentle spirit sorrow-fed,
It hides the scars with almost human hands.
And only to the heart that knows of grief,
Of desolating fire, of human pain,
There comes some purifying sweet belief,
Some fellow-feeling beautiful, if brief.
And life revives, and blossoms once again.
- Emily Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)