Review
"A free, weightless solo for sopranos alone begins this dreamy setting of an atmospheric poem. The disjunct melody evokes the text's longing, searching for Christ's presence as the Good Shepherd. As voices join the texture, the text is delineated in duets with other parts holding sustained wordless notes, tethering the sinuous lines to a harmonic base. At the conclusion of the first stanza of the poetry, the music shifts from a flexible meter to a serenely stable triple-time wordless lullaby. The second stanza of verse begins with altos returning to the peripatetic mood of the beginning. Voices move through various tonal areas by way of some abrupt modulations, ultimately returning to the wordless lullaby in the home base of C major. Unconventional harmonic progressions and surprising chromatic inflections pose some challenges, yet the lines are vocally conceived throughout." --AAM Journal, May/June 2025

Anthem text
O saw you our belovéd where the cedars darken over
The moon-white iris grown beside the stream?
Or did you meet him walking in the honey-breathing clover,
The first star flowered before him like a dream?
O far and very far away from all your quiet fountains,
From all your solemn valleys rich in sleep,
I only heard a shepherd singing on the mountains,
Singing as he folded in the sheep.

O found you our belovéd ere the winds of morning found him
In the thickets by still waters where love is?
Did you know him from his fellows by the thorny bents that crowned him
Among the lily-gardens that are his?
O far away and far away from all the hidden meadows,
From the gardens where the year goes shod in gold,
I only heard a shepherd singing in the shadows
As he carried home the younglings to the fold.
--Marjorie Pickthall (1883-1922)