Echo

Voicing: SSAA and piano
Text: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)
Published by: Cypress Choral Music, CP1083 (2002)
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Notes: The Association of Canadian Choral Conductors Composition Competition 2002 first-prize winner, this work was composed in 2001 and premiered at Podium 2002 in Toronto by the National Youth Choir, Lydia Adams, conductor.
Echo is the final piece in Allan Bevan's trilogy, For a Dream's Sake. Echo can be performed separately, or with its two companion pieces: An End and Mirage. These pieces make a strong statement about the power of love and loss. 

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View the complete score at Cypress Choral Music

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.

Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

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Performed by: Concerto Della Donna, Iwan Edwards, conductor; Pamela Reimer, piano; recorded on: Allan Bevan, Parlez-Moi (2011).

Performed by: The Manitou Singers of St. Olaf College, Dr. Sigrid Johnson, conductor; recorded on St. Olaf Records Repertoire for Women's Voices, Vol. 7 (2011)

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Christina Rossetti