This choral composition puts music to Robert Frost’s poem of the same name. It aims to mourn but eventually accept the inevitable reality that the beautiful colors of nature fade away as the seasons change. Moments of text painting in this piece include: a descending melodic line in the soprano part as they sing “sank to grief”, a consequent descending layered chord as the other three parts sing “sank down to grief” leading up to a dissonant chord on the word “grief”, the reinforcement of the words “so dawn goes down to day” with a descending chromatic line in the accompaniment as the voices gradually decrease in volume, and the voices ending in unison for their last mention of “gold”, a complete contrast from the consonant five-part harmony of the opening line “nature’s first green is gold”, thus reinforcing that the gold cannot stay. The voicing is SSATB and the difficulty is intermediate/early advanced.
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Austin-Sinclair Harris 