Mid-winter
03:30 duration|Composed in 2022|Difficulty: Moderate
A huge number of composers have been drawn to set the Christina Rossetti poem “In the bleak mid-winter” to music. It is an appealing text with some beautiful word choices and attractive imagery but I have always been aware that most musical renditions of the poem are really not very “bleak” or “wintry” at all! It was with this thought in mind that I took to the task of composing a setting that was a bit less gentle.
I chose to omit Rossetti’s third verse, leaving four verses in a contrasting ABBA structure that moves between more sparse and dissonant material in A minor for the first and last verses and a fuller, added note harmony style in A major for the middle two verses.
As this is one of the few instances where I have set the same text twice – my earlier setting was my first performed piece back in 1985 – I chose a shorter and maybe more direct title for this 2022 version: Mid-winter.
