Description

Voicing: SATB choir, woodwind quintet

Level: 4

Duration: 5 minutes

To see perusal score, please contact Jocelyn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28GDCSulNAk

Chamber Choir conducted by Matthew Goinz, with the Chione Woodwind Quintet

Jocelyn Hagen composed this work as a response piece to her a cappella mixed choir work Ophelia. (https://www.jocelynhagen.com/product/ophelia-download/). The intertwining lines played by the woodwind quintet illustrate the tangled weeds, and the vocal lines float over the top, just like Ophelia’s lifeless form.

Text

Crown of Weeds, by Julia Klatt Singer

What is love

If it goes untouched, unspoiled?

If in words declared, and then denied–

Does it make Love less than love?

Into the river sails Ophelia

In her crown of weeds. Water

Water carries her onward,

this heavenly creature.

Water, water all that is

within and without.

For what is life

without love?

What is Ophelia

without hers?

Composer’s Notes

Eventually this work will be a part of a set along with my other a cappella work Ophelia. If you’d like to consider commissioning a movement of this larger work, or the rest of the four movements, please contact me.