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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

Seed

Name: Seed
SKU: JS-123
Availability: InStock

Joan Szymko

An ode to living life to its fullest — out loud, in the light.

fall, secular, spring, summer, winter

Duration: 3-5 min.

JS-123

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SATB, piano

“Seed” is a setting of “Declaration” by poet Elsa Gidlow, (free spirit, spiritual mystic, and author of the first volume of openly lesbian love poetry published in North America: On a Grey Thread (1923). “Seed” is an ode to living life to its fullest— out loud, in the light. It was commissioned by the Contra Costa Chorale to honor Artistic Director Cindy Beitman for 12 years of inspiring service as Artistic Director. Cindy was to have conducted the premiere, but shortly before the concert date, finally succumbed to a cancer she had survived for nearly 7 years. The work is richly textured, woven with varying tempi and voicing. Altos are featured.

Text

I am a seed in the dust,
A live root bedded in night,
And I am filled with a lust
for something the worms call light.
From what seed-pod I was blown
Matters little to me,
Why and by whom I was sown
Or what the reaping may be.
I only wait for my hour
When I shall be done with night,
When I shall thrill into flower
And drink till I die of light.

-Elsa Gidlow (1898-1986)

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