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Juggler of Day - "Sunrise Music and Sunset Music" (2007)

For female choir (SSAA)
Text by Emily Dickinson

First performance by the Cornell Women's Glee Club
Scott Tucker conducting, Ithaca, NY, 27 October 2007
Duration: 7 minutes

BUY SCORE

 
Text

Blazing in gold and quenching in purple,
Leaping like leopards to the sky,
Then at the feet of the old horizon
Laying her spotted face, to die;
Stooping as low as the kitchen window,
Touching the roof and tinting the barn,
Kissing her bonnet to the meadow, —
And the juggler of day is gone!

—Emily Dickinson

Program Note

Scored for female chorus, Juggler of Day sets an Emily Dickinson poem juxtaposing sunrise with sundown, with the ecstatic, billowing textures continually coalescing into full, rich harmonies before dissolving again. A slow but relentless momentum dominates the first half, a long-breathed contrapuntal episode lyrically weaves and criss-crosses the voices, fluctuating like the sun's glow just before it slides over the horizon, before the music slowly dissipates and fades in the final, twilit section.

— Paul Pellay

 

Commissioned by the Cornell University Chorus, Scott Tucker, Director Dedicated with admiration and gratitude to the Cornell University Chorus and Scott Tucker

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