The Snow Man (2005) for high voice and piano
text by Wallace Stevens

Program Notes:
The Snow Man is the result of a friend and colleague, Gary Hartsook, requesting I write a song for him in the fall of 2005. I selected Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man for my text and completed composition that November. Gary premiered the piece on December 1, 2005.

The Snow Man is dedicated to and in memory of Gary, who died in a car accident on the evening of Sunday, October 28, 2007 at the age of 22.


Text:
Wallace Stevens’ The Snow Man, from Harmonium (1923):

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.


For a free PDF score, email aaronkrerowicz@gmail.com.

Erica Maas, soprano
Jeehyun Kim, piano