Winter: Outside, In
mixed choir, orchestra, and optional bagpipes
(2023)
Duration: 13 minutes
Premiered by: Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic and Choirs, Andrew Carlisle (bagpipe) and members of the Carnegie Mellon bagpipe studio
Daniel Curtis, conductor
2023
Pittsburgh PA
Composer’s Note
Winter: Outside, In roots itself through all things “winter.” Having grown up and lived in northern climates, I have known the weather in this season to move quickly from loud and blustery wind to the muffled stillness of a quiet snow. I know the balance of gray days with brilliant, cold-weather blue skies. I know that many plants die in the cold, but others thrive; that some animals fall into deep hibernation while others scurry around and endure the elements. Mathilde Blind’s poem, “A Winter Landscape,” evokes dark, chilly, and brilliantly crisp winter air, encompassing the natural, northern environment of the season.
In “The Christmas Holly,” Eliza Cook invites us indoors and out of the winter’s cold. A festive carol is waiting, one that celebrates the warmth of community, sharing a table and a song, toasting the holly branches which not only live through the winter weather, but stand out brilliantly against the whites and grays of the season. This movement pays tribute to many of the long-standing musical traditions of December, including a local Pittsburgh nod to the late Robert Page who was such an icon of the concert at which Winter: Outside, In premieres.
These two movements are sibling pieces; they are performed attacca, though they can each, also, stand alone. Though they have distinct voices and musical footprints, motivic materials and textures carry through the entire piece as a way of sonically moving from the outside experience of winter laid out by Blind, into the warm, festive interior of Cook’s poem.
Text
A Winter Landscape
All night, all day, in dizzy, downward flight,
Fell the wild-whirling, vague, chaotic snow,
Till every landmark of the earth below,
Trees, moorlands, roads, and each familiar sight
Were blotted out by the bewildering white.
And winds, now shrieking loud, now whimpering low,
Seemed lamentations for the world-old woe
That death must swallow life, and darkness light.
But all at once the rack was blown away,
The snowstorm hushing ended in a sigh;
Then like a flame the crescent moon on high
Leaped forth among the planets; pure as they,
Earth vied in whiteness with the Milky Way:
Herself a star beneath the starry sky.
Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)
The Christmas Holly
The holly! the holly! oh, twine it with bay —
Come give the holly a song;
For it helps to drive stern winter away,
With his garment so sombre and long;
It peeps through the trees with its berries of red,
And its leaves of burnished green,
When the flowers and fruits have long been dead,
And not even the daisy is seen.
Then sing to the holly, the Christmas holly,
That hangs o’er here and all things;***
While we laugh and carouse 'neath its glittering boughs,
To the Christmas holly we'll sing.
The gale may whistle, the frost may come
To fetter the gurgling rill;
The woods may be bare, and warblers dumb,
But holly is beautiful still.
In the revel and light of princely halls
The bright holly branch is found;
And its shadow falls on the lowliest walls,
While the brimming horn goes round.
Then sing to the holly, the Christmas holly,
That hangs o’er here and all things;***
While we laugh and carouse 'neath its glittering boughs,
To the Christmas holly we'll sing.
The ivy lives long, but its home must be
Where graves and ruins are spread;
There's beauty about the cypress tree,
But it flourishes near the dead;
The laurel the warrior's brow may wreathe,
But it tells of tears and blood;
I sing the holly, and who can breathe
Aught of that that is not good?
Then sing to the holly, the Christmas holly,
That hangs o’er here and all things;***
While we laugh and carouse 'neath its glittering boughs,
To the Christmas holly we'll sing.
Eliza Cook (1818-1889)
***changed from “That hangs over peasant and king”
by the composer.