Completing the Circle | SATB, SSAA, or TTBB Chorus a cappella | 4'
Though Barbara Crooker describes a modern Christmas in her text for Completing the Circle, there is a timeless, even ancient sense of ritual in the way she depicts the season of Advent: “gathering branches / of green pine... / making rings of fire / in wax and wood.” The memory of Christmases past can be bittersweet, too, and Crooker alludes to this in the darkness that winter brings: “days of grey / and iron nights.”
Ultimately, though, memories offer us a link to the past as well as a comfort that can be felt even in the darkest nights of winter. Christmas carols, I think, do exactly the same thing.
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Completing the Circle is dedicated with gratitude to the participating choruses of the Christmas Past, Christmas Future! Carol Consortium, who co-commissioned this piece along with Glorious, Glorious. While Completing the Circle sets a modern text that recalls nostalgic memories of Christmas, Glorious, Glorious sets a classic text that looks ahead to a bright future.
text
ADVENT
with the women, waiting,
gathering branches
of green pine
in the dead of the year,
making rings of fire
in wax and wood,
completing the circle
with calls and cards,
wreathing the children
in cinnamon and chocolate,
stringing berries and corn,
stringing memories,
quilting them tightly,
in winter,
with the days of grey
and iron nights.
—Barbara Crooker
commissioning choruses
Acalanes High School Choirs
Bruce Lengacher
Acappellago
Dennis Smith
Ars Musica Chorale
Dusty Francis
Baltimore Choral Arts Society
Tom Hall
Cane Bay High School Choirs
William Bennett
Choral Arts Ensemble
Rick Kvam
College of DuPage Chamber Singers
Lee Kesselman
Flower Mound High School Choirs
Mark Rohwer
Harmonium Choral Society
Anne Matlack
The Heritage Chorale
Barry Sawyer
Hollywood Master Chorale
Lauren Buckley Schaer
Macalester Concert Choir
Michael McGaghie
Nova Vocal Ensemble
Jonathan Bautista
Singers in Accord Choral Ensemble
Syracuse Vocal Ensemble
University of Southern California Chamber Singers
Jo-Michael Scheibe
early drafts & composing notes
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