American-Finnish composer Alex Freeman (b. 1972) studied in the Eastman School of Music, Boston University and Juillard School of Music before completing his doctoral degree in the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Choir music forms a notable part of Freeman’s list of work.

Cathedral of Spring for chamber choir (2019) is set to poems of e.e. cummings and Robert Frost. It was commissioned and premiered by Helsinki based Somnium Ensemble. The composer tells: ”I was commissioned to write a piece with spring as a central theme. While contemplating that and perusing appropriate poetry, I was inspired by memories of the night-time sky in early spring – the warm air, the teeming, buzzing energy of life all around, and an expansive dome of stars overhead. I then imagined that moment in time as a kind of sacred space; this is the point where the “cathedral” notion came to mind.

The frenetic and joyous poetry of e.e. cummings, from his Epithalamion, gives an exclamatory introduction to the set, followed by his vision of spring from the point of view of giddy children in his iconic poem, [in Just-]. We then take a moment to contemplate the ephemerality of all this beauty (spring giveth and spring taketh away, i.e. an offertorium of sorts); Robert Frost’s Blue-Butterfly Day places us in a moment where, by chance, we find ourselves enveloped by a delicately fluttering swarm of butterflies. Peaceful and still, yet in constant flux, we spend a some time taking that phenomenon in, while also experiencing a twinge of the realisation that this is truly fleeting. The final movement, returning to a later stanza from Epithalamion, cummings’s sparkling paean to May is set as a kind of final anthem.”

The sheet music is available from Fennica Gehrman:
https://webshop.fennicagehrman.fi/page/product/9790550115675