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. 
 

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.