Water Night

Night with the eyes of a horse that trembles in the night,
night with eyes of water in the field asleep
is in your eyes, a horse that trembles,
is in your eyes of secret water.
Eyes of shadow-water,
eyes of well-water,
eyes of dream-water.
Silence and solitude,
two little animals moon-led,
drink in your eyes,
drink in those waters.
If you open your eyes,
night opens, doors of musk,
the secret kingdom of the water opens
flowing from the center of night.
And if you close your eyes,
a river fills you from within,
flows forward, darkens you:
night brings its wetness to beaches in your soul.
Octavio Paz, 1914-1998
(Adapted by Eric Whitacre, Translation by Muriel Rukeyser)

I'm a huge fan of Eric Whitacre's choral music. One of the cool things that he does is set up a virtual choir, where people from all over the world record themselves singing one of his pieces, and sound/video technicians mesh all the videos together into one massive choir. This year's virtual choir piece is 'Water Night', text above. The music complements the poetry beautifully. As a first soprano, I love being given the opportunity to let my voice soar up to the A-flats around the line 'If you open your eyes...'. I also love the melodies given to the inner parts, particularly the altos at the very end. And the bass E-flats make me melt.

Last year, my choir sang another of Eric Whitacre's pieces, 'When David Heard', and there was a bit of a disagreement about how to sing the opening section. One of the guys in my choir asked Eric on his facebook page, and he actually replied. So not only is he an amazing composer, but a nice bloke, too!

So if anybody wants to join in this amazing, international project, here's the link:

http://virtualchoir.ericwhitacre.com/