Jan Gilbert

SATB Chorus

Composer's Note:

The poem "Light" is from Gitanjali (Song Offerings), Rabindranath Tagore's most famous work. I have chosen to set Tagore's own prose translaton of the original Bengali, first published in 1913 by W.B. Yeats. The Bengali text begins "Alo amár, alo ogo, alo bhubon bhora... (light, my light, the world-fulfilling light.")

This setting of "Light" begins without words in a slow unfolding of the South Indian raga rasikapriya, one of the more unusual ragas with a raised 4th in its scale melody. The raga frames the entire work, from its opening unfurling to the imbedded harmonic structrures supporting the through-composed setting of the text. The work is dedicated to Clerestory, whose extraordinary blend of voices evoke what Tagore, as both musician and poet, perhaps meant by "heart-sweetening light!"