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Eric William Barnum
A conductor and composer, Eric William Barnum continues to passionately seek new ground in the choral field. Working with choirs of all kinds, his collaborative leitmotif endeavors to provide intensely meaningful experiences for singers and audiences. Barnum is currently the Director of Choral Activities at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa and previously, the Director...
Eric William Barnum
Waiting for the Dawn
A hazy and evocative telling of the coming beauty of light-filled dawn.
SATB div, piano.
This pastoral setting of William Morris’ glorious poem Summer Dawn is filled with dramatic lines and textures, colored with opaque hues, and holds in balance the impatient waiting of nature as it looks forward to the new day sun arising once again. There is an uneasiness amid the beauty, an impatience amid the glory, and a clear, crisp brightness despite the onset of a hazy golden morning. Waiting for the Dawn attempts to capture that special “time between times” between night and day
— a time that is but a glimmer, yet can seem to last forever.
Text
PRAY but one prayer for me ‘twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips
Faint and gray ‘twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.
– William Morris (1834-1896)
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips
Faint and gray ‘twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.
– William Morris (1834-1896)
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