About – Score – Arrangements – Text – Performances
About
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting was commissioned by St. Bartholomew’s Church, New York, NY as part of the Faith Partners Residency of the American Composers Forum, with funds provided by the Wolfensohn Family Foundation.
For this residency, in which St. Bartholomew’s Church collaborated with Temple Emanu-El and the Church of St. Ignatius-Loyola, also of New York City, I composed four pieces, one for each congregation, and one as a joint commission to be performed by each of the three congregations. St. Bartholomew’s, wanting for its individual commission a piece for both the children’s and adult choirs of the congregation, chose a beautiful excerpt of William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality. The text highlights a principal idea of the entire poem—that in childhood we have intimations of an existence transcending our everyday physical world, and that as we grow into adults, this vision fades. The piece juxtaposes the clear unison lines of the children’s choir with the more complex harmonies of the mixed choir and organ, beginning and ending in quiet wonder.
The premiere of Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting was performed by the St. Bartholomew’s adult and children’s choir, William Trafka, conductor, in November 2002.
—Gerald Cohen
Score
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St. Bartholomew children’s and adult choirs, William Trafka, conductor
Text
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting,
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
and cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
from God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!