Program Notes

So Remembering Him was composed as a part of the application materials for NYU Tisch's Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program. The poem is a set as a fusion between musical theater and art song. The song was written from the perspective of a father morning the loss of his son.

Text
Time does not bring relief (Sonnet II)
Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   
There are a hundred places where I fear   
To go,—so with his memory they brim.   
And entering with relief some quiet place   
Where never fell his foot or shone his face   
I say, “There is no memory of him here!”
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Premier: April 1, 2016. Clayton Daniel Briggs, tenor