ECHO (2010)

INSTRUMENTATION

High Voice, Piano

DURATION

6 minutes

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.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
   Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull 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 tho’ 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

PROGRAM NOTE

Echo (2010) for high voice and piano is based on the text of Christina Rossetti’s timeless poem of the same name. An English poet living in the late 19th century, Rossetti is well-known for her romantic poetry, which often deals with themes of love, spirituality, and the power of dreams.

Echo epitomizes such ideas, describing a passionate romance that is forever frustrated by the inexorable passage of time. As such, the music possesses an ethereal, dreamlike quality that evokes the feelings of a woman who beckons her lost love, only to realize that she must now experience that love in dreams alone.

–Jules Pegram (2010)