Girl Hours (2019)

for SATB or SSSAAA choir, a cappella

Girl Hours
CA$3.00

Text: Sofia Samatar (b. 1971)
Duration: 5 minutes
Difficulty: 3/4

Commissioned by The Fourth Choir (London, UK) and dedicated with deepest appreciation to David Sturgeon, a benefactor of the choir. SATB version first performed by The Fourth Choir (Dominic Ellis-Peckham, dir.) in October 2019. SSSAAA version first performed in Montreal, QC by Choeur Adleisia (Virginie Pacheco, dir.) in November 2024.

Girl Hours is based on the life of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, an influential American astronomer who discovered a way to measure the distances of stars in the early twentieth century. Alongside other women, Leavitt was employed at the Harvard College Conservatory as a human computer, made to study photographs and make calculations, rather than operating the telescopes. As a result, the director of the conservatory measured the difficulty of their projects in ‘girl hours’. Samatar’s elegant poetry turns this belittling phrase into a statement of power and a testament to the important intellectual labour of these women. My music imagines Leavitt working late into the night, studying her photographic plates and seeing instead the immensity of the universe stretching before her.

Click here to see the complete score (SATB version).

Click here to see the complete score (SSSAAA version).

Two recordings below:

  • Live performance of the SSSAAA version by Choeur Adleisia (Megan Batty, dir.) in December 2024.

  • Commercial recording of the SATB version from the album Ispiciwin, released in 2023 by Luminous Voices. This album was nominated for Classical Album of the Year (Large Ensemble) in the 2025 Juno Awards.

Full Text


Twelve o'clock.
My husband and children asleep.

To chart one more star, to go on working:
this is a way of keeping faith.

Draw me a map.
Show me how to read music.
Teach me to rise without standing,
to hold the galaxy's calipers
with the earth at one gleaming tip,
to live vastly and with precision,
to travel
where distance is no longer measured in miles but in lifetimes,
in epochs, in breaths, in light years, in girl hours.

© Sofia Samatar, 2011. Used with permission.