An Emily Dickinson Suite

An Emily Dickinson Suite was commissioned in 2008 by the Amherst Regional High School Wind ensemble. This project, funded entirely from within the school and community of Amherst, Massachusetts was the initiative of then music director of the wind ensemble, Brian Messier.

The suite takes the form of nine vignettes inspired by eight untitled poems of Emily Dickinson. I took the liberty of titling the vignettes from the first line of each poem.

1: This Is My Letter To The World
2: To Hear An Oriole Sing
3: I’m Nobody
4: The Little Stone
5: If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking
6: A Narrow Fellow In The Grass
7: A Day! Help! Help! Another Day!
8: Hope Is The Thing With Feathers
9: This Is My Letter To The World

The score contains the full texts of the poems and my foreword touches on the process I used to compose these ‘songs without words’. The texts of the poems are meant to be projected on a screen during the performance. You may obtain the attractive PowerPoint presentation included in the purchase price of the score.

Christopher Marshall
Orlando, Florida, 2009