Instrumentation or Chorus: SSAATTBB a cappella
Difficulty: University, Graduate/Professional, Community
Duration: 5’15”
Text: Robert Frost
Language: English
Nothing Gold Can Stay (2025), like many of my other choral works, draws from Renaissance polyphony mixed with modern harmonies to create a complex soundscape: in this case, the transience of endings and beginnings. This piece departs from my usual, however, by having an aleatoric ending; as the choir repeats the same two measures for the last 90 seconds of the piece, three soprano soloists repeat excerpts from the poem in an increasingly chaotic cascade, the music swelling to an unbearable angst before dying away almost completely. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day; Nothing gold can stay.
Nothing Gold Can Stay was premiered on June 8, 2025, by the Mount Vernon Chamber Singers, under the direction of Kevin Lackie. Kevin, best of luck on your next journey in Boston! I’m so glad that our endings and beginnings got to overlap for this past year.