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Ellen Gilson Voth
Compose Like a Girl
The Harbor and the Sea (with Bb clarinet)
Poignant and dramatic, like a chorus from an opera.
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The Harbor and the Sea
for SSAA choir, piano and Bb clarinet
“The Harbor and the Sea” portrays the poignant drama of a “weary wanderer” tossed by the sea, searching for a safe harbor and a place to call home. Whether metaphorical or literal, every heart deserves safe passage, peace, warmth, love, and shelter. Composed in a dramatic, almost operatic style, the piano evokes various images, such as a fluttering sail (or heart?) and tremulous waves (and nerves?). The united voices in one voice part brings reassurance and hope to the tense scene.
Active as a conductor and composer, Ellen Gilson Voth composes works that reflect her passion for and commitment to high standards of artistry in writing for the human voice. Praised for music that is “superbly crafted for singer and accompanist,” Voth’s works have been commissioned and premiered by a wide range of professional, semi-professional and amateur choirs across the US, and featured at regional and national conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and College Music Society. Her art song and short opera works have garnered national attention as well. An experienced educator and clinician, she regularly presents workshops and coaches emerging composers on the art and craft of composition. Voth received her DMA degree from The Hartt School, University of Hartford, and currently lives with her husband and daughter in West Hartford, CT. To learn more about her work, visit www.ellengilsonvoth.net.
Composer’s Notes
The call for scores for the ACDA Genesis Prize in 2020 prompted many partnerships between poets and com- posers. I am thrilled for how “The Harbor and the Sea” brought together a poet in Indiana, a composer in Connect- icut, and multiple women’s choirs from across the country to collaborate and premiere a new piece.
Inspired in part by the riveting story of Doaa Al Zamel and her journey from Syria as told by Melissa Fleming in her book, A hope more powerful than the sea, this piece – scored for SSAA choir, piano and optional clarinet – tells of a traveler battered by waves and storms, who finally makes her way to a harbor. Will she find space and be welcomed there?
The piece speaks a broad, life-affirming message that, whatever waves buffet us in the course of our lives, we are not alone when we reach out and welcome others who face their own turbulent journeys in their search for safety and acceptance, and that, ultimately, we are all on a journey for a place to call home.
– Ellen Gilson Voth
Text
The weary wanderer
Tossed and tattered by whirling wind Sees a star above the storm,
A ray that beams…
Amid the waves
She calls out through the wind:
“I have traveled long on the stormy sea – This journey to be free.
My hope is in these trembling hands;
I barely stand.
When I see my longed-for land, Has it a place for me?”
Away from shore,
Salt water glistening on her face – (Tears or waves? She does not know) – She presses on through the darkness In hope of a harbor ahead,
Calling out again:
“I have traveled long on the stormy sea – Though not yet free.
My hope is passing through these hands – I cannot stand.
You who live on stable land – Have you a place for me?”
Her vision blurs – mind churns – “Do I see helping hands,
or still no place to land?
Must I return to darkness behind?” But then, a place to anchor ahead, A light draws near,
And voices call:
“You have traveled long on the stormy sea. Come now and taste of hope. Take our hand. Our strength is yours when you cannot stand. After all you have been through,
There is room
in the harbor/our harbor for you.”
– Elizabeth Sunshine Koroma, ad. E.G. Voth
“We do not have a permanent city… We are looking, we are yearning for a city to come.”
– Excerpts from Epistle to Hebrews. Public domain.
$1.95 per licensed PDF
