“Prologue” and “The End of the World”
Texts by Archibald MacLeish
Juilliard Pre-College Chorus, Rebecca Scott, conductor, June 1982, Juilliard Theater, New York
“Prologue”
These alternate nights and days, these seasons somehow fail to convince me.
It seems seems I have the sense of infinity
O crew of Columbus (In your dreams) over the sea
For that surf that breaks upon nothing
Once I was waked by nightingales in the garden
I thought What time is it? Is it time still? Now is it time?
(Tell me your dreams O sailors:
In sleep did you climb
The tall masts and before you)
the stillness of old trees
is a leaning over the inertness
Of hills is a kind of waiting.
(In sleep, in a dream, did you see the world’s end?
Did the water break and nore shore
Did you see?)
Strange faces come through the streets to me
Like messangers
I have been warned
By the moving slowly of hands at a window
O, I have the sense of infinity
But the world, sailors, is round
There say there is no end to it.
“The End of the World”
Quite umexpectedly as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe
Ralph the lion was engaged biting the neck of Madame Sossman
while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz time singing
Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:
And there, there overhead, hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There is the starless dark, the poise, the however,
There with vast wings across the canceled skies,
Ther in the sudden blackness, the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
More Vocal and Choral Works
The Prism of the Lyre, Opus 197
Seven Principles for SATB chorus acapella No. 7, Opus 193
In Common Things for soprano and piano, Opus 190 no. 2
Music when soft voices die, no. 1, Opus 190 no. 1
The Shadows Fall So Gently, Opus 181
Parables of Love and Death, Opus 173
A Hymnbook for Congregational Singing, Opus 169
The Harp at Nature's Advent, Opus 167
Thou God of Love, Thou Ever Blessed, Opus 164
Blest Are the Sons of Peace, Opus 16
O God our Help in Ages Past, Opus 162
Awake our Souls, Away our Fears, Opus 160
Once to Every Soul and Nation, Opus 144
Arrangements of Congregational Music for Thanksgiving, Opus 142
I'm Just A Poor Wayfaring Stranger, Opus 131
And Am I Born to Die?, Opus 129
Fancies, a cycle of five songs for Tenor and Piano, Opus 117
Revels, A cycle of ten songs for Baritone Voice and Piano, Opus 114
The Echolocations of Cellos, Opus 108
The Seasons, A Cantata, Opus 101
Summer: The Fragrant Pathway of Eternity, Opus 100
Spring: In the Pendulum of My Body, Opus 99
Duet from Holy Ghosts, Opus 93
Winter: Exaltations of Snowy Stars, Opus 929
Unchanging Love, a hymn based on a text by Romulus Linney, Opus 87
Fall: Autumnal Raptures, a song cycle for Tenor and Harp, Opus 86
Songs of Time and Eternity, Opus 64
Ten Poems of William Blake, Opus 53
“The Immortal Beloved”, Opus 50
A Cry Against the Twilight, Opus 42
Reality Is an Activity of the Most August Imagination, Opus 8