The Summer Day

Poet/Lyricist: 

Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Such is the emphatic query in “The Summer Day,” —the first movement of “It Is Happiness,” a twenty minute choral suite for treble voices and chamber orchestra featuring fresh and lively settings of iconic poetry by Mary Oliver, one of America’s most significant and best-selling poets. A master of vibrant and illuminating text setting, Joan Szymko is at her best here. She is privileged to be one of just a handful of composers ever granted permission to set Oliver’s poetry to music. This stand-alone movement has been rescored by the composer for piano with flute obbligato.
A fantastic concert opener or closer!

Level: 

Moderate
Item Voicing/Instrumentation Duration Price Audio View Score Quantity
JS-119
pdf purchase only (12 copy minimum)
SSA, piano, flute obligato 4:30 $2.50 https://joanszymko.com/sites/joanszymko.com/files/audio_samples/JS-119_The%20Summer%20Day.mp3
JS-120
pdf purchase only (12 copy minimum)
SAB, piano, flute obbligato 4:30 $2.50

Publisher: 

JOAN SZYMKO MUSIC
Text

Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

itemtext: 

pdf purchase only (12 copy minimum)