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Jeffrey Derus
Caribbean Blue Publishing (Jeffrey Derus)
In The Silence Of The Night
We all long for the return of our loved ones, even if it is only in our dreams.
SATB Chorus with Divisi, & Piano
Commissioned by Robert Davis and the Ruben S. Ayala High School Vocal Ensemble, this piece is set to a haunting text by Christina Rossetti. The speaker in this poem is expressing the longing for the past and their desire to remain connected to it. Rossetti uses repetition and vivid imagery to explore themes of identity, perception, and mortality. The music reflects those themes in the beginning where the chorus is calling the memories or person that we lost to come back. The piano offers a sense of mood and is an emotional engine for the text to travel through this dark landscape of life. As moments of the past come forward the music mirrors those feelings leading you to the final realization; no matter how strongly we long for those who are no longer with us, they can only visit us in our dreams. This piece would make a wonderful program centerpiece as well as fit into themes of mortality, longing, and the past.
Text
Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!
-Christina Rossetti
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