Sweet Stillness
$60.00
Sweet Stillness is a plea for the opposite: for peace, kindness, and the grace that comes through humility. The music creates a neutral space to contemplate, center, feel, and extend grace to one another. It incorporates two brief excerpts from Barthold Heinrich Brockes’ poem Süße Stille, sanfte Quelle (Sweet Stillness, Soft Springs), which was originally set by Händel. Those lyrics are printed in italics. The rest of the text I crafted myself as I felt there were missing components in what I wanted to convey. The work is dedicated to my late friend and colleague Dr. K. M. (Kay) Knittel “who still lights the world around us.” Sweet Stillness is scored for a quartet of solo vocalists, chorus, piano, and string orchestra (or reduced string quartet) and was supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Description
The germination of Sweet Stillness began with hearing Händel’s setting of Barthold Heinrich Brockes’ poem Süße Stille, sanfte Quelle (Sweet Stillness, Soft Springs) many years ago. I’ve often recalled the poem’s sentiment—searching for stillness and peace—not in their liturgical context, but more in a humanistically universal way. Much later a colleague and dear friend Dr. K. M. (Kay) Knittel kindly translated the text from German. In 2023 I was contacted about this choral commission and immediately of Kay’s translation of the Brockes as the text seemed relevant, an antidote to our world’s current darkness, strife, and anger. In the end I only set two brief excerpts from the Brockes, which are printed in italics. The rest of the text I crafted myself as I felt there were missing components in what I wanted to convey. In an increasingly violent, mean-spirited, and often graceless time My Sweet Stillness is a plea for the opposite: for peace, kindness, and the grace that comes through humility. The music creates a neutral space to contemplate, center, feel, and extend grace to one another. The work is dedicated to Kay “who still lights the world around us.” Sweet Stillness is scored for a quartet of solo vocalists, chorus, piano, and string orchestra (or reduced string quartet) and was supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts. For more info about this work click here.
Materials (score & parts) are available as downloadable PDF files.
