Idylls
for mixed chorus and percussion

The Nashoba Valley Chorale —  Johanna Hill Simpson, Conductor

Idylls is a three-movement cantata representing afternoon, evening, and morning in New England, set to poems of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Roethke, and Mary Oliver. LeVines clusters complex rhythms and tonal colors -- serene or syncopated, peaceful or riveting -- covering a broad dynamic spectrum. The work concludes in an exuberant climax emerging from a choral tapestry which recalls the three individual movements texturally and musically. — Nashoba Valley Chorale

Idylls was commissioned by Nashoba Valley Chorale in 2000 in celebration of the millennium.

Idylls
for mixed chorus and percussion

The Nashoba Valley Chorale —  Johanna Hill Simpson, Conductor

Track Listing

  1. 1. Wood-Gods

    Because I was content with these poor fields,
    Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
    And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
    The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
    And granted me the freedom of their state,
    And in their secret senate have prevailed
    With the dear dangerous lords that rule our life,
    Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
    And pitying through my solitary wont
    Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.
    For me in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring
    Visits the valley:—break away the clouds,
    I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air,
    And loiter willing by yon loitering stream.
    from 'Musketaquid' by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1847

  2. 2. The Small

    The small birds swirl around;
    The high cicadas chirr;
    A towhee pecks the ground;
    I look at the first star:
    My heart held to its joy,
    This whole September day.
    ~ ~ ~
    The moon goes to the full;
    The moon goes slowly down;
    The wood becomes a wall.
    Far things draw closer in.
    A wind moves through the grass,
    Then all is as it was.
    ~ ~ ~
    What rustles in the fern?
    I feel my flesh divide.
    Things lost in sleep return
    As if out of my side,
    On feet that make no sound
    Over the sodden ground.
    ~ ~ ~
    The small shapes drowse; I live
    To woo the fearful small;
    What moves in grass I love—
    The dead will not lie still,
    And things throw light on things,
    And all the stones have wings.
    The Small ©1956 by Theodore Roethke. From the Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

  3. 3. Morning (Morning at Great Pond)

    It starts like this:
    forks of light
    slicking up
    out of the east,
    flying over you,
    and what’s left of the night--
    its black waterfalls,
    its craven doubt--
    dissolves like gravel
    as the sun appears
    trailing clouds
    of pink and green wool,
    igniting the fields,
    turning the ponds
    to plates of fire.
    The creatures there
    are dark flickerings
    you make out
    one by one
    as the light lifts--
    great blue herons,
    wood ducks shaking
    their shimmering crests--
    and knee-deep
    in the purple shallows
    a deer drinking:
    as she turns
    the silver water
    crushed like silk,
    shaking the sky,
    and you're healed then
    from the night, your heart
    wants more, you are ready
    to rise and look!
    to hurry anywhere!
    to believe in everything.
    Morning at Great Pond ©1983 by Mary Oliver. From American Primitive by Mary Oliver (Atlantic-Little, Brown)