Description
Kallman Creates Publications
SSAA, piano, flute. Duration: 3’30”
Listen
Brigham Young University Women’s Chorus; Jean Applonie, conductor.
Women’s Ensemble of Northwestern College; Mary Kay Geston, conductor.
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Composer’s Notes
The piece was premiered in 2011 by the Women’s Ensemble of Northwestern College, conducted by Mary Kay Geston. It was commissioned in loving memory of Mary Loeffler by Rodney Loeffler, Northwestern College Music Department Chair from 2003-2008. The music reflects the poet’s longing to know and experience God, including the surprising miracle of God’s presence in the small, often ordinary things that we experience each day within our natural world.
Vestigia
by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
I took a day to search for God,
And found Him not. But as I trod
By rocky ledge, through woods untamed,
Just where one scarlet lily flamed,
I saw His footprint in the sod.
Then suddenly, all unaware,
Far off in the deep shadows, where
A solitary hermit thrush
Sang through the holy twilight hush –
I heard His voice upon the air.
And even as I marveled how
God gives us Heaven here and now,
In a stir of wind that hardly shook
The poplar leaves beside the brook –
His hand was light upon my brow.
At last with evening as I turned
Homeward, and thought what I had learned
And all that there was still to probe –
I caught the glory of His robe
Where the last fires of sunset burned.
Back to the world with quickening start
I looked and longed for any part
In making saving Beauty be …
And from that kindling ecstasy
I knew God dwelt within my heart.
