Peace

soprano, flute, and piano | 2’30” | 2019

Performed at conTemplum's SoundPrints I concert on October 16, 2019

Julia Bokunewicz, soprano
Serena Huang, flute
Isaac Young, piano

---

The 19th century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins is known for his unique treatment of rhythm in his poems. This setting of his 1879 poem “Peace”, for soprano, flute, and piano, attempts to capture that unique rhythm. This piece, much like the poem, wanders through many meters and key areas before finally settling into a definitive tonal center.

Peace (1879) by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

When will you ever, Peace, wild wooddove, shy wings shut,
Your round me roaming end, and under be my boughs?
When, when, Peace, will you, Peace? I’ll not play hypocrite
To own my heart: I yield you do come sometimes; but
That piecemeal peace is poor peace. What pure peace allows
Alarms of wars, the daunting wars, the death of it?

O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu
Some good! And so he does leave Patience exquisite,
That plumes to Peace thereafter. And when Peace here does house
He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo,
                He comes to brood and sit.