Product Description
On April 8, 2024, I had the privilege to be able to view a solar eclipse in totality. I'd previously seen one at around 99% totality, but 100% is a completely different experience. I periodically glanced at the sun in my protective glasses, watching the disc shrink down to nothing, not expecting much other than the absence of a sun. But I looked away for a moment, and my son suddenly cried, "It's there!"
I turned and gasped: the sky was a flat twilight blue, and a crisp brilliant ring glowed in the sky, safe to view with the naked eye. The world was still, strangely silent, alien and new. We all tried to grab as many pictures as we could. After a few minutes, the moon continued its arc across the sky, and the sun's glare abruptly reappeared, already blinding even as a sliver. I can still see that ring in my mind's eye, fiercely burning, as if someone had literally cut a circle out of the sky and exposed another universe behind it.
In this piece I tried to capture the growing ominous wonder of an eclipse approaching totality. While the 2024 eclipse was not visible in Russia, the Russian word for sun, солнце (solntse), has a lily-like fragility to it that the English equivalent does not. Various parts of the choir repeat the word throughout the piece, and the repeated "ts" and "s" sounds should create a percussive susurrance. Stagger breathing should be used throughout.
Also repeated is the Russian word for moon, луна (luna). As the eclipse approaches that crystalline moment of totality, the moon becomes more and more prominent and the text more chantlike. The refrain, first sung by a solo bass at bar 7, and sung in variation by the other parts thereafter, is repeated in its original form once by the sopranos near the top of their range. This represents the sun in final desperate ecstasy, before it too collapses into the inevitability and madness of occultation.
After an indefinite sudden pause, the shock of the moment, the choir reverently sings suscipe deprecationem nostram. Glorificamus te. As the moon frees the sun from its cold grip, the menace of the previous section threatens to return, but just as quickly fades, revealing once again солнце в небе (the sun in the sky).
This product was created by a member of ArrangeMe, Hal Leonard's global self-publishing community of independent composers, arrangers, and songwriters. ArrangeMe allows for the publication of unique arrangements of both popular titles and original compositions from a wide variety of voices and backgrounds.