Nothing Gold Can Stay

I've been looking for an excuse to write a song to this poem for a while. Lately, I've been feeling quite inspired and enjoyed the process of writing music again. So I came back to this poem with a vengeance. 

The poem in original format is:
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I decided to take the first two lines and use them as a chorus. Then the other parts, I use a chant-like and free time idea to express the ethereal nature of leaves falling and not lasting. This is a work that I enjoyed writing and now have found it to be a little short and repetitive, but I also think that in the context or a larger song set, which I am writing, will make much more sense and the repetition will serve it in the long run. 
 

Edited March 1, 20242 yr by Some Guy That writes Music

This is very lovely!  Ranges are all achievable for a wide variety of groups, and the lines are quite singable.  The only thing I might tweak would be how you have allocated words to notes in some places.  For example, in the alto part, m. 13 and 14, "her hardest hue to hold" is a bit awkward the way it is currently set.  The "-est" of "hardest" is one of the weakest stresses in the line if you speak it, but you have that syllable falling on beat three of a 4/4 measure, it's the highest pitch in the phrase, approached by a leap for added drama, and it is in tension with the B in the soprano line.  The stress marking on "hard-" at beat two helps, but it's still a bit awkward.  

I'm nitpicking, though.  This is lovely writing, and the whole thing is a treat.  One of my favorite poems!

On 6/16/2023 at 7:03 AM, pateceramics said:

This is very lovely!  Ranges are all achievable for a wide variety of groups, and the lines are quite singable.  The only thing I might tweak would be how you have allocated words to notes in some places.  For example, in the alto part, m. 13 and 14, "her hardest hue to hold" is a bit awkward the way it is currently set.  The "-est" of "hardest" is one of the weakest stresses in the line if you speak it, but you have that syllable falling on beat three of a 4/4 measure, it's the highest pitch in the phrase, approached by a leap for added drama, and it is in tension with the B in the soprano line.  The stress marking on "hard-" at beat two helps, but it's still a bit awkward.  

I'm nitpicking, though.  This is lovely writing, and the whole thing is a treat.  One of my favorite poems!

 

Thank you for the feedback. I have now edited it with meter changes to show this change. I kept -est two beats long, I think this is fine because it is now in a 3/4 measure which helps hint at the word stress. Now the stressed syllables happen on the stressed beats.