We Must Be Slow (text: Kenneth Patchen) for SSA choir; 6' (1997)
composer's note: If you're looking for my setting of "We Must Be Slow" for SATB mixed choir, please visit the page for All Weeping Things. That setting of this Kenneth Patchen poem is something I'm immensely proud of, and I'd love to you take a look at it! This one is... a very early piece, but one I'm still quite fond of.
This SSA choral setting of "We Must Be Slow" is the first thing I ever wrote for choir, and it helped me immensely in understanding how to write for massed voices, and how to express text & meaning in such a context. When I decided to pick up this text and set it again as part of All Weeping Things, I had learned so much more about how to work with a choir after building upon the lessons I'd originally started learning by writing this piece... But this piece was built on my knowledge from singing in choirs for so long, and I wrote what I would want to sing if I were a treble voice. Honestly, I think it's a pretty successful piece, especially for a first attempt, even though I prefer my later setting of the same poem.