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Joan Szymko

Joan Szymko is widely regarded as an outstanding composer of choral music in America today. With a catalog of over 100 choral works in print, her music is sung regularly at choral festivals and competitions across North America and abroad and for nearly two decades has been heard on stage or in sessions at every...

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Joan Szymko Music

At the Spring Dawn

Name: At the Spring Dawn
SKU: JS-117
Availability: InStock

Joan Szymko

Exploring the feelings of being awakened by the dawn and the joy of being alive.

Difficulty: 3

Duration: 3-5 min.

JS-117

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SSAA a cappella

This bright, joyous setting of a poem by Angelina Grimké explores the feelings of being awakened by the dawn and the joy of being alive.

“As a black lesbian woman in the early twentieth century, Grimké’s successful publications and many contributions to social movements are truly remarkable.” — HarvardSquareLibrary.org

Text

I watched the dawn come,
Watched the spring dawn come.
And the red sun shouldered his way up
Through the grey, through the blue,
Through the lilac mists.
The quiet of it! The goodness of it!
And one bird awoke, sang, whirred,
A blur of moving black against the sun,
Sang again –afar off
And I stretched my arms to the redness of the sun,
Stretched to my fingertips,
And I laughed.
Ah! It is good to be alive, good to love,
At the dawn,
At the spring dawn.

-Angelina Weld Grimké (1880-1958)

$2.50 per licensed PDF