Takach: 15 -16 Secular Winter Consortium – SATB and piano

 

I’ve commissioned Anthnoy to write a text for the opening
of the cycle. He will pull thoughts and images from the other
texts in the cycle, and this poem will serve as a parallel
bookend to the final poem by Wendell Berry. This cycle is not
only about the jounrey of the weather, but also the journey of
our souls – how we survive the slow, dark season.

 

(This movement is done – listen to it here.)

The gleaning done, the ashen pods and vines,

just twitch and rattle with what’s left behind.

The purple stubble on the fields below

erasing now with patches of first snow.

 

Cornstalks turn ghostly. Wagon, barn and rake

give up their shapes, and the new shapes they take

no longer presage any human thing.

The wilderness recalls her underling.

 

We need the strength of all we can endure,

to grant what earth gives up and  make it sure.

The twining and the gathering is the easy part

for now the rind is ripe and heavy like the heart.

 

The liquid light that poured into our flesh

must take us through the night of cold and emptiness

when colors of the world fade into one.

The web of branches stretches till it’s gone.

 

 

And there are the dawns and the dusks

when the snow is falling,

when the lights in the villages

take on a fat and gauzy glow,

when the whole prairie world, although dark,

seems somehow aglow,

when the sky above the storm

becomes the particular pale pink

of a prairie rose in bloom.

When the winter sky puts on that face,

the only possible response is to keep silent,

as before any many-splendored thing.

 

 

 

A blizzard races a blizzard,

neither can defeat the other:

now one pulls ahead,

now it is behind the other.

 

I watch until my eyes tire,

the mind’s world enters my thought:

A blizzard races a blizzard,

neither can defeat the other.

 

 

 

The longest night

The brightest moon

The sharpest sting of cold

The barest branch

The hardest earth

My breath the only cloud

 

And I am out walking to ask the winter moon:

Who will I be when the spring rains come?

 

The air so still

Smoke rising straight

The snowbanks sleep so deep

The quiet star

The silent night

A lone bird wakes and sings

 

And I am out walking to hear my heart,

And I am out walking to hear my heart.

 

 

 

This morning, the wind and a bent weed

working together…

 

drawing the shape of last night’s moon

in the snow.

From the willow,

melting ice dripped,

from the alder

wet snow slipped.

 

High on the air came a cry:

I hear, I hear!

I’m coming, I, the spring,

I’m coming, I’m coming!

 

 

 

I was walking in a dark valley

and above me the tops of the hills

had caught the morning light.

I heard the light singing as it went

among the grass blades and the leaves.

I waded upward through the shadow

until my head emerged,

my shoulders were mantled with the light,

and my whole body came up out of the darkness, and stood

on the new shore of the day.

Where I had come was home,

for my own house stood white

where the dark river wore the earth.

The sheen of bounty was on the grass,

and the spring of the year had come.

Biography

Reviewed as “gorgeous” (Washington Post) and “stunning” (Lawrence Journal-World), the music of  Timothy C. Takach has risen fast in the concert world. Applauded for his melodic lines and rich, intriguing harmonies, Takach has received many commissions from organizations including the St. Olaf Band, Cantus, Pavia Winds, the Bowling Green State University Men’s Chorus, The Singers: Minnesota Choral Artists, the Cherry Creek High School Meistersingers, VocalEssence and the Western Michigan University Chorale. His compositions have been heard on NPR and have been recorded by ensembles across North America.

 

The 2007 Texas and the 2009 Florida All-State Choirs performed his piece “The Darkling Thrush,” and his arrangement of “What Child is This” was featured on the 2007 Boston Pops holiday tour. His arrangement of “Twas in the Moon of Wintertime” was included in a 2006 worldwide Christmas radio broadcast. Takach has received grants from the American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, Minnesota State Arts Board, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and yearly ASCAP awards since 2004.

He is a co-creator of the theatrical production of All is Calm: the Christmas Truce of 1914, by Peter Rothstein. The critically adored show has had over 100 performances since it’s premiere in 2006. He was also selected for the 2014 Nautilus Music-Theater Composer-Librettist Studio.

 

Takach studied music composition at St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, where he graduated with honors. He has frequent work as a presenter, clinician and lecturer for conventions, schools and organizations across the country. He has been Artist-in-Residence at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and a featured presenter at Vassar College’s Modfest. He is a full-time composer and lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two sons.