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Abbie Betinis

Composer Abbie Betinis creates “inventive” (The New York Times), “joyful… incandescent” (Boston Globe) music that “expands into ethereal realms” (Cambridge University Press). With performances from Carnegie Hall to Disney Hall, state prisons to capitol buildings, international cathedrals to intimate summer campfires, her music transports performers and audiences alike through storytelling, relevance, and craft. Her vast...

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Abbie Betinis Music Company

i carry your heart with me (SATB)

Name: i carry your heart with me (SATB)
SKU: AB-023-01
Availability: InStock

Abbie Betinis

Elegant setting of a love deep enough to motivate the universe.

Choral

mixed choir

a cappella

Difficulty: 3

Duration: 3-5 min.

AB-023-01

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SATB a cappella

With her deft hand, creating satisfying melodies for everyone, and clear love for the text, composer Abbie Betinis takes us through E. E. Cummings’ famous poem with an earnest elegance. Beginning intimately, the music grows and grows until the “deepest secret” love has become “the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart.” Lush harmonies move naturally through occasional divisi, making the music’s pure, unison moments sound all the more magical.

Composer’s Notes

This piece has always been special to me. Composed when I was 23, I was still trying to figure out what to do with my heart’s big loves – how to navigate who I am on my own, who I am with someone else, and especially how loving someone deeply (even if it’s a secret love) can change our entire perspective on life. I think E. E. Cummings is saying that one person – even just one person in love – changes everything. It can make the sun sing.

My favorite part to write was growing that “deepest secret” from the low voices up through the roots and buds and sky until it becomes everything that makes the universe work (it’s “keeping the stars apart”). Now I realize that I was working out what it was to be myself, to voice my passions, to let people know when I loved them, to put myself out there in the world and let love guide me through.

-Abbie Betinis, 2023

Text

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-E.E. Cummings
Copyright 1952, © 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from COMPLETE POEMS: 1904-1962 by E.E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

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