An Analysis of Selected Choral Works by Kirke Mechem: Music-Textual Relationships in Settings of Poetry of Sara Teasdale Page: 13
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The star that led them all the way
Did glorify the night.
The angels came from heaven high,
And they were clad with wings;
And lo, they brought a joyful song
The host of heaven sings.
The kings they knocked upon the door,
The wise men entered in,
The shepherds followed after them
To hear the song begin.
The angels sang through all the night
Until the rising sun,
But little Jesus fell asleep
Before the song was done.
So simple and standard is the form of the poetry that it falls into a classical metric
pattern established in England as ballad meter, consisting of four line stanzas with the first and
third lines of the poetry having four-foot iambic lines and the second and fourth lines having
three-foot iambic lines.29 Mechem's setting of this poem effectively retains the original rhythm of
the poetic text through the use of 6/8 meter and accompanies the SATB setting with amplified
guitar creating a pastoral effect as if the ancient tale were being told by a strumming balladeer.
The harmonic structure of this piece is an example of Mechem's use of traditional
structures in non-traditional means. Rather than simply taking the listener through a journey of
harmonic progressions, areas of tonalities create an association with ideas or characters within
the poetry. The first of such characters is introduced by the tenor in the
1329 James Reeves, Understanding Poetry, (London: Heinemann, 1965), 126.
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Bierschenk, Jerome Michael. An Analysis of Selected Choral Works by Kirke Mechem: Music-Textual Relationships in Settings of Poetry of Sara Teasdale, dissertation, August 2003; Denton, Texas. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5533/m1/17/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; .