I Will Keep Still
by Michael John Trotta
4-Part - Sheet Music

SATB choir a cappella (SATB choir a cappella)

SKU: AN.AMP-0892

Composed by Michael John Trotta. Octavo. Alliance Music Publications #AMP 0892. Published by Alliance Music Publications (AN.AMP-0892).

Trotta.

About the poet . .Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali writer, painter, and musician perhaps best knownfor his poetry. In 1913, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature forhis work. Gitaniali (Song Offerings) is comprised of 103 English poems dealing with a metaphysicalnature of union. The nineteenth poem in the collection, If thou speakest not I will fill my heart withthy silence, is used as the foundation of this choral work. The imagery highlights the path of interiorreflection as offering solace to the disquietude of waiting for light in the midst of darkness.

If thou speakest not
I will fill my heart with thy silence
and endure it.
I will keep still
and wait like the night
with starry vigil
and its head bent low with patience.
The morning will surely come,
the darkness will vanish,
and thy voice pour down
in golden streams
breaking through the sky.
Then thy words will take wing
in songs from every one
of my birds' nests,
and thy melodies
will break forth
in flowers in all
my forest groves.

From Gitanjali
Translated into English by the Author (1913)

recording performed by eChoir
Dayton, Ohio
Drew Collins, conductor