Dawn

Commissioned by Hypatia’s Voice for their 10th anniversary season with generous support from the City of Ottawa. Christopher Ducasse – Artistic Director.

Composer’s Note

Writing this piece for Hypatia’s Voice was a special project for me as this is a choir that I founded in 2015 in Ottawa and conducted until 2019, having moved to Edmonton in 2018.

This beautiful poem by Marjorie Pickthall really spoke to me in the way it held a still moment in time for the entire five stanzas poem, capturing that sacred magical feeling of a quiet Dawn. It reminded me of standing on the beach at Lake Huron, where I grew up, early in the morning when the lake is quiet and still, before the waves start to move as the day unfolds.

In my setting, I’ve tried to capture this sense of stillness, and although the piece develops toward the middle, it returns to the same sense of stillness at the end, holding the dawn the same way it started. Singers should strive to create long phrases that have an internal shape without going overboard and disrupting the sense of quiet stillness.
There are a couple of places where I’ve given the alto 3 line a louder dynamic – this is for balance purposes. Please feel free to adjust as needed. I also suggest a flexible approach to the tempo in sections A and B – these sections can ebb and flow and need not stay strictly at the indicated metronome marking.