A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM
for mixed SATB choir
Written: 2010
Duration: 7'
Instrumentation: mixed SATB choir (a cappella with divisis, SSAATTBB)
Text by Edgar Allan Poe
Commissioned by the Chamber Choir of Europe, Nicol Matt, director
World Premiere: Chamber Choir of Europe, Nicol Matt, director, July 28, 2011, The European Festival of Church Music, Schwäbisch Gemünd, Germany.
Publisher: Bill Holab Music
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PROGRAM NOTE
The text for A Dream Within A Dream is derived from the Edgar Allan Poe poem of the same name. Poe wrote this poem when he was eighteen, and it was first published in 1849, the year he died. The poem may be viewed as a reflection on Poe’s feelings about his life at the time, and dramatizes his confusion in watching the important people in his life slip away, like grains of sand. Realizing he cannot hold onto even one grain of sand leads to his final question: "Is all that we see or seem, But a dream within a dream?"
A Dream Within a Dream was commissioned by Festival Europäische Kirchenmusik for Nicol Matt and the Chamber Choir of Europe.
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A Dream Within a Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
This much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?– Edgar Allan Poe
Text in the public domain.
Press Quotes
“The two works [A Dream Within A Dream, Life is But a Dream] by the important living American composer Robert Paterson left an especially deep impression, with dynamically, thoroughly worked out clusters and rhythmically sophisticated, interwoven patterns. The audience responded to the performances in the crowded Franciscan church with long, sustained applause and standing ovations.”
“Paterson was personally present at the concert and received a lot of applause. [A Dream Within A Dream, Life is But a Dream] made use of homogenous phrases, but also clusters and dissonance which never hurt... his work contained a great variety of parts and voicing, in some case extended with soloists.”