Guidance (2015)
for SAB choir, flute, and piano
Text: Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and Horace (65 BC-8 BC)
Duration: 7 minutes
Difficulty: 2/4
Commissioned by Katlyn Redding for the Graduating Class of 2015 at Greenall High School (Balgonie, SK). First performed by the Greenall High School Choir (Katlyn Redding, dir.) in June 2015.
When I was contacted by Katlyn Redding to compose a piece for her high school choir (as a goodbye to her graduating choral students), I was both flattered and frightened. In Guidance, my challenge was to keep as much complexity in the music as possible, while still making the work accessible and fun to high school singers (and their listeners). The piece is cast in three large sections; the first and last use Robert Herrick’s classic poem, To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time (better known by its first line, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…”), and the music captures the joie de vivre of the text with its spacious chords and glittering flute solo. The central section is more introspective, using a Latin ode from the Roman poet Horace; this poem is simply a warm letter to his friend, urging him to live in the moment.
Click here to see the complete score.
Live recording currently unavailable. MIDI available on request.
Full Text
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And, while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.
Do not ask, we never know,
my fate or yours,
Leuconoe,
nor study Babylonian calculations.
How much better to suffer whatever happens.
If we have many winters or Jupiter gives us the last,
which now breaks the Tyrrhenian waves
against the opposing rocks.
Be wise, mix the wine,
and limit your long hopes in the shortness of life.
While we speak, envious time is flying:
Seize the day, and place little trust in tomorrow.
Tu ne quaesieris, scire nefas,
quem mihi, quem tibi finem di dederint,
Leuconoe,
nec Babylonios temptaris numeros.
Ut melius quidquid erit pati.
Seu pluris hiemes seu tribuit Juppiter ultimam,
quae nunc oppositis debilitat
pumicibus mare Tyrrhenum.
Apias, vina liques,
et spatio brevi spem longam reseces.
Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas:
carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.