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Jeffrey Derus
Caribbean Blue Publishing (Jeffrey Derus)
A Dream Within A Dream
This work reflects the individual sands in our own hourglass, and how precious they are to us.
SATB Chorus & Piano
Commissioned by Jonathan Souza and the Gilroy High School Chamber Singers in 2021, “A Dream Within a Dream” explores the significance and reality of life. The speaker watches as the things that are important to them are taken away and struggles to hold on to them. Musically the structure of this work unfolds into the slow spiraling the speaker is falling into. Using the SA and TB voices at separate times to emphasize different parts of the text, they come together for the most emotional sections. The piano acts as the atmosphere the work lives in and it reflects the moment of a kiss. Through this singular moment, we see the entirety of what we value in life flash before our eyes before returning to that kiss. A program themed around prolific poets, life and death, or significant moments, would be enhanced by this moving centerpiece.
Text
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allan Poe
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