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Timothy C. Takach
Timothy C. Takach Publications
After Harvest (from The Longest Nights)
A still and ghostly depiction of a rural winter landscape.
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The Longest Nights
SA, piano
From the choral cycle The Longest Nights.
From the larger cycle The Longest Nights, “After Harvest” is an accessible piece for 2-part treble voices. Takach employs singable melodies with unexpected counterpoint between them. The piano accompaniment is harmonically supportive yet sparse, and the singers will find delight in painting the poetry with the written accents and stresses. This piece has a home on any winter program.
Composer’s Notes
I’ve always imagined the winter months as the bottom third of a circle, dipping lowest at the new year and then coming back up to find Spring. There was never any negativity or depression attached to that image, but I do think it’s neat to think about the act of journeying through Winter as a descent of sorts. We dig deep, we nestle ourselves in, we maintain until it’s safe to come out. The texts and music in this piece touch on that idea–that we have to endure, we have to stay strong through the turning of the year. The images of hibernation and metamorphosis come to mind as well–will we be the same person on the other side? Or do we grow? Do we change?
The piano writing in “ After Harvest” is sparse and open, signaling the onset of cold and darkness. Monica Raymond’s poem paints a landscape that’s covered in snow, and she talks about how the light and warmth of summer “ must take us through the night of cold and emptiness.”
– Timothy C Takach
Text
The gleaning done, the ashen pods and vines,
just twitch and rattle with what’s left behind.
The purple stubble on the fields below
erasing now with patches of first snow.
Cornstalks turn ghostly. Wagon, barn and rake
give up their shapes, and the new shapes they take
no longer presage any human thing.
The wilderness recalls her underling.
We need the strength of all we can endure,
to grant what earth gives up and make it sure.
The twining and the gathering is the easy part
for now the rind is ripe and heavy like the heart.
The liquid light that poured into our flesh
must take us through the night of cold and emptiness
when colors of the world fade into one.
The web of branches stretches till it’s gone.
– Monica Raymond
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