The Dark Around Us, Come, Giselle Wyers | Santa Barbara Music Publishing, Inc.

A DIGITAL ROOM OCTAVO
Distinctive Music for the Advanced Choir

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THE DIGITAL ROOM

The Dark Around Us, Come [level: Medium]
Giselle Wyers: Bio and other works | Giselle Wyers Choral Series

Digital Room Octavo

voicing: SATB | catalog number: SBMP 1528 | price: $1.75
accompaniment: piano

This setting of Wendell Berry’s evocative poem “The Dark Around Us Come” can be sung as a stand-alone piece, or as the completion of a set of pieces Giselle Wyers calls “Three Hymns for the Earth”: 1: “The Dark Around Us Come, 2: I Go Among Trees, and 3: “The Waking”.

In this poem, Berry describes an imaginary tribunal of all the elements and creatures of the earth, including humans: “light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing”. These living creatures meet in darkness- a darkness of spirit, or the literal darkness of a shadowed forest, to attempt reconciliation. Wendell Berry seems to suggest that humankind must come to “know” all of the earth and join in harmony with the planet as “One household high and low” so that "all the earth shall sing.” This piece embodies the sorrow of our failings to reconcile with the earth, but ends with a poignant hope and optimism, as is reflected in Berry’s simple yet radiant text. The composer hopes by singing this work, we will find a way towards “rejoicing mind and eye, rejoining known and knower."

performance by: UW Chamber Singers, Geoffrey Boers, conductor [© all rights reserved]

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CLICK HERE: Read the Text or Poem

The dark around us, come, Let us meet here together,
Members one of another, Here in our holy room,
Here on our little ?oor, Here in the daylit sky,
Rejoicing mind and eye,
Rejoining known and knower,
Light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing,
Such order as we know,
One household, high and low,
And all the earth shall sing.

Wendell Berry

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