Composer: Deanna WitkowskiDetailsFormat: Treble VoicesVoicing: SSAAIncidental Divisi: SAccompaniment: keyboardInstrumentation: pianoNotation: standardPerformance Length: 3:24 Study Scores & Audio FilesStudy Score & Audio Order Printed ScoresOrder site / Alternate source of score: musicspoke.com Texts & TranslationsLanguage(s): EnglishText Source: Rabindranath TagoreText: This is my delight, thus to wait and watch at the wayside where shadow chases light and the rain comes in the wake of the summer. Messengers, with tidings from unknown skies, greet me and speed along the road. My heart is glad within, and the breath of the passing breeze is sweet. From dawn till dusk I sit here before my door, and I know that of a sudden the happy moment will arrive when I shall see. In the meanwhile I smile and I sing all alone. In the meanwhile the air is filling with the perfume of promise. Programming AidsPerformance Difficulty: difficultSeasonal Usage: SolsticeDescriptive Terms: spirituallightAllow Excerpts: Composition is a single movementComposer’s Notes: This work is the first of my two original settings of Tagore poems from Gitanjali. I originally heard some of Tagore’s poetry in the early 2000s when I was accompanying for a vocal class on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Someone in that class read or sang one of Tagore’s poems, and the spiritual yet universal essence of his work stuck with me. In 2015, I wanted to write a new treble choir piece, remembered Tagore, and started reading through Gitanjali, marking poems that struck me with musical possibilities. The entire text of “Where Shadow…” vividly brings to mind experiences at yearly silent retreats at Linwood Spiritual Center in Rhinebeck, New York. During these week-long retreats, I share Tagore’s sense of delight in waiting, in noticing, in knowing that “the happy moment will arrive when I shall see.” And, too, there is the “meanwhile” where “I smile and I sing all alone” and the air fills “with the perfume of promise.” I tried to evoke richness of this contemplative experience - filled with its active waiting and occasional moments of ecstasy - in my choral setting. Additional InformationDate of Completion: June, 2016Date of First Performance: Thursday, June 30, 2016Premier Performance Data: Illinois ACDA Directors' Chorus (Jonathan Reed, cond), IL-ACDA Summer ReTreat at Illinois State University, Normal, IL Additional Performances: May 6, 2017: Jenny Lind Vocal Ensemble at Augustana College, Rock Island, IL. Michael Zemek, conductor. Nov 17 and 18, 2018: Melodia Women's Choir, New York, NY. Cynthia Powell, conductor. April 13, 2019: Cantus Femina at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. Dee Gauthier, conductor. Fall 2019: Women's Choir at College of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, MN. Susan Cogdill-Vollbrecht, conductor.
