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Timothy C. Takach
Timothy C. Takach Publications
Many-Splendored Thing (from The Longest Nights)
Beautiful melodies weave together to paint a quiet picture of newly fallen snow. A perfect secular seasonal piece for men.
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The Longest Nights
TB, piano
From the choral cycle The Longest Nights.
Warm, lush tones evoke the beauty of newly fallen snow. Written as part of the longer cycle The Longest Nights, Takach has given some of his best writing to this piece for 2-part men’s choir. The vocal lines capture the wonder, awe, and astonishment of the season, and the idiomatic piano writing is an independent voice but also a delight to play.
Composer’s Notes
I’ve always imagined the winter months as the bottom third of a circle, dipping lowest at the new year and then coming back up to find Spring. There was never any negativity or depression attached to that image, but I do think it’s neat to think about the act of journeying through Winter as a descent of sorts. We dig deep, we nestle ourselves in, we maintain until it’s safe to come out. The texts and music in this piece touch on that idea–that we have to endure, we have to stay strong through the turning of the year. The images of hibernation and metamorphosis come to mind as well–will we be the same person on the other side? Or do we grow? Do we change?
Winter can also take on a beautiful form, as is evidenced in Paul Gruchow’s writing. The music here paints a different perspective on the season. It’s warm, full and rich, and we are asked to take in this scene with a sense of awe, of wonder that illicits a response, simply, of silence.
– Timothy C. Takach
Text
And there are the dawns and the dusks
when the snow is falling,
when the lights in the villages
take on a fat and gauzy glow,
when the whole prairie world, although dark,
seems somehow aglow,
when the sky above the storm
becomes the particular pale pink
of a prairie rose in bloom.
When the winter sky puts on that face,
the only possible response is to keep silent,
as before any many-splendored thing.
– Paul Gruchow (used with permission)
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