a frost sequence VIEW

notes

Nothing Gold Can Stay is also available for SSAA and in a SATB Bilingual (French/English) edition.

2020 was a devasting year for choirs. COVID-19 regulations kept us apart, and inperson choral activities ceased across the world. We had to get creative and think outside the traditional music box.

Deborah Finlayson and Dan Leader, two creative people with a life-long engagement with singing, commissioned this choral sequence in 2020 to honour their love of nature, music, and singing with people they love. Mark Vuorinen and the Elora Singers partnered with us to bring these pieces to life.

The three Robert Frost poems reflect on the ephemeral nature of existence, the consequences of decision-making, and the tug of our dream world against the real world of responsibilities. An over-arching theme is time: time that decays all that is precious, time that we cannot recover or re-live, and time that passes too quickly, even as we recognize the fleeting beauty surrounding us.

You will be reading this 'somewhere ages and ages hence'. We cannot know when these songs will ever be sung, heard, rehearsed, performed, recorded, or played. Nonetheless, we move forward in hope, and keep creating, thanks to friends who believe that old rhyme:

"All things shall perish under the sky. Music alone shall live, never to die."

Stephanie Martin
Toronto, January 2021