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The Singing Place (text: Lily A. Long)
​
for SATB choir and piano; 5.5’ (2013)
(commissioned by Dr. Bruce Gladstone)

performed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Chorale with pianist Martha Fischer, dir. Bruce Gladstone:

composer's note: As a composer, I'm constantly trying to expand my horizons, taking stock of my dislikes & fears and then doing whatever I can to stop disliking or fearing things irrationally.  One of those dislikes, for a long time, was anything that falls into the category "singing about singing."  "That's so cheesy" I would exclaim to myself!

Deep down, I knew that was wrong, and so "The Singing Place" is me tackling my own unkind judgment head-on.  Lily A. Long's poem is so beautiful and full of wild energy, and it felt SO right to write a choral piece like this one, that is directly about singing, and asks the choir to sing with all they can muster.  I made the first stanza of the poem into something like a refrain, and then allowed the rest of the poem to build in a neverending circle of wave-like melody that builds and builds upon itself until finally crashing into silence.

text:
Cold may lie the day, 
And bare of grace; 
At night I slip away 
To the Singing Place. 

A border of mist and doubt 
Before the gate, 
And the Dancing Stars grow still 
As hushed I wait. 
Then faint and far away 
I catch the beat 
In broken rhythm and rhyme 
Of joyous feet,— 
Lifting waves of sound 
That will rise and swell 
(If the prying eyes of thought 
Break not the spell), 
Rise and swell and retreat 
And fall and flee, 
As over the edge of sleep 
They beckon me. 
And I wait as the seaweed waits 
For the lifting tide; 

To ask would be to awake,— 
To be denied. 
I cloud my eyes in the mist 
That veils the hem,— 
And then with a rush I am past,-— 
I am Theirs, and of Them! 
And the pulsing chant swells up 
To touch the sky, 
And the song is joy, is life, 
And the song am I! 
The thunderous music peals 
Around, o'erhead- 
The dead would awake to hear 
If there were dead; 
But the life of the throbbing Sun 
Is in the song, 
And we weave the world anew, 
And the Singing Throng 
Fill every corner of space--

Over the edge of sleep 
I bring but a trace 
Of the chants that pulse and sweep 
In the Singing Place.

sample page:

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