Evening Waterfall

Evening Waterfall comes from a cycle of eleven a cappella choral pieces derived from “Early Moon,” a collection of poetry by Carl Sandburg. The images in these simple, direct lyrics have a depth and resonance that all but cry out for musical expression: a balloon-seller turns a world of “wishing children” into spring; dive-buzzing bugs choose appropriately colored flowers for their “summer bungalows;” the whistle of a fog-bound boat calls and cries like a lost child “hunting the harbor’s breast and the harbor’s eyes;” rodents riddle you why “the grave of a rat is no deeper than the grave of a man;” horses, fish, birds, men, women, children —they are, all of them, something larger than they seem—“and they are named All God’s children.”

In the cycle, many different compositional techniques are employed: diatonicism, atonality, pure sound…whatever is required by the varied imagery of each poem. And while sometimes technically complex, the emphasis is always—as in the poems themselves—on a forthright, almost child-like directness of expression.

Evening Waterfall is one of the easiest, certainly the most diatonic, of the “Early Moon” pieces. Imagine yourself—or, perhaps, your childhood self—sitting in a tree or lying on the grass in the gloaming of a summer’s evening. The sounds of birds, the feel of wind on your skin, the sight of early stars: all seem to conspire to give you a name…to call you by your real name. But such knowledge—a kind of certainty about one’s self and place—is ephemeral. It cannot be willed to appear, or to stay. We are left alone, wondering “what was the name you called me? and why did you go so soon?”

—Russell Horton