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About the Composer
Timothy C. Takach
Timothy C. Takach Publications
Circles
We find connections between each other, and music stays at the center of it all.
SATB a cappella
This uptempo piece is an exciting marriage of words and sound. The independent vocal lines swirl around in circles as the harmonies emerge from within the changes. Takach has captured the cyclical nature of the ideas here as well as the mystery found within Wendell Berry’s writing. The message is clear: We find connections between each other in the seasons of change, and music stays at the center of it all.
Composer’s Notes
Energy flows around the room as we sing on stage. A conductor takes their cues from the music, gives it to the singers, who give it back to the conductor and to the audience. My job is to funnel and direct that energy, using the sound of consonants, the color of vowels and the rhythm of speech to charge the air of a roomful of listeners, asking them to stay with the music–to pay attention. “Circles” is filled with such energy, coming from the theme of Wendell Berry’s poem. Everything around us constantly changes and yet repeats throughout our lives. We come together and drift apart, lose someone and gain someone else, feel deep grief and profound joy. Berry finds joy in this, in the holding of each other as we join together and allow music to connect us.
Now, at the tail end of this global pandemic (seemingly in it’s own hundred year circle), I dream about what I once took for granted: being with others, standing close, singing, joining hands in joy, completing a circle of my own. It begins with a composer’s inspiration and then moves to poetry, to notes on a page, to the conductor, to the singers, and back to an audience that perhaps has a composer within, embracing it all and being inspired to go back and write again.
– Timothy C. Takach, 2021
Text
Within the circles of our lives
we dance the circles of the years,
the circles of the seasons
within the circles of the years,
the cycles of the moon
within the circles of the seasons,
the circles of the seasons,
the circles of our reasons
within the cycles of the moon.
Again, again we come and go
changed, changing. Hands
join, unjoin in love and fear,
grief and joy. The circles turn,
each giving into each, into all.
Only music keeps us here,
each by all the others held.
In the hold of hands and eyes
we turn in pairs, that joining
joining each to all again.
And then we turn aside, alone,
out of the sunlight gone
into the darker circles of return.
– “Song (4)” by Wendell Berry (Copyright © 2012 by Wendell Berry, from New Collected Poems. Reprinted by permission of
Counterpoint Press.)
$2.15 per licensed PDF
Music from Timothy C. Takach Publications
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We Wish You a Merry Christmas
Difficulty: 4Duration: less than 3 min. -
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Changed By Beauty
Difficulty: 4
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