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Linda Tutas Haugen

Performed on four continents, Linda Tutas Haugen’s music has been critically acclaimed as “music of character and genuine beauty.” [Minneapolis StarTribune.] Opera Today praised her opera, Pocahontas, as “superbly crafted,” “engaging,” and “beautiful and powerful.” She has written for instrumental and vocal chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, wind ensemble, solo voice, chorus and opera. Linda has...

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Linda Tutas Haugen (Ephraim Bay Publishing)

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud (Daffodils)

Linda Tutas Haugen

A simple melody, enhanced with rich harmony and changing meters that fit the text.

Choral

treble choir

1-2 instruments, piano

Difficulty: 2

Duration: 3-5 min.

LTH – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

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S(S)A, piano, flute

A lyrical setting of Wordsworth’s poem, illustrating the discovery of daffodils beside a lake with a simple melody, enhanced with rich harmony and changing meters that fit the text.

Composer’s Notes

“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” was commissioned by the ACDA of Minnesota for the Girl’s Honor Choir in 2012, in honor of its 50th Anniversary. The text is from William Wordsworth’s famous poem of the same name, commonly known as Daffodils. Wordsworth wrote this poem based on an experience he and his sister Dorothy had while hiking in England’s Lake District, when they came upon a “highway” of daffodils, “a long belt of them along the shore, about the breadth of a country turnpike road.” (Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grassmere Journal, 15 April 1802)

When searching for a text for these young women, the “Daffodils” poem came to mind as I recalled the poetry I loved as a teenager, and what inspired me. It combines appreciating the beauty of nature, observed by simply going for a walk, and discovering something amazing and powerful you have never experienced before, because you happened to be there at the right time and place. The joy and wonder in nature was there 200 years ago, and it still can be found today.

– Linda Tutas Haugen

Text

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
in such a *jocund company:

I gazed – and gazed – but little thought
what wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

– William Wordsworth

*The word “laughing” used in the original 1804 version is substituted for “jocund” in this setting of the text.

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