Mind of Winter

2016 | for SATB choir | 3'

Twenty-two winters in the American Midwest were more than enough for me. Living in San Francisco, I don't particularly miss the black ice and dirty parking lot slushbergs of my childhood. And yet there's a certain unique magic to winter where it hits the hardest: tree branches encased in crystal, colorless skies that dim eerily early, the perfect crisp silence of untouched snow. Wallace Stevens' poem "The Snow Man," which this piece sets, captures the harsh beauty of midwinter as well as anything I've ever read.

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Mind of Winter was written during my first barely-wintry winter living in San Francisco. It uses shimmering extended vocal techniques and a mix of tight clusters and widely spaced harmonies to accentuate the iciness of Stevens' text. It's also influenced by the exceptional music of my late mentor Sven-david Sandström, a giant of Swedish choral music.

This piece would make an excellent addition to any winter concert, particularly one that's looking to include a non-Christmas-related work. Thematically, it would also program well alongside other pieces about silence, nature, or the passage of time.

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