Description
This setting of Clarissa Scott Delany’s poem features an upbeat, buoyant, syncopated theme in the piano that compliments the playful exuberance in the vocal melody. The exclamation of “joy” is interspersed with brief pauses to rhythmically enliven the feeling of jubilant vibrancy, while other evocative words such as “shakes” and “laughs” are highlighted through melismatic word painting. A brief, reflective musical interlude accompanies the acknowledgment of past sorrows, in contrast to the outer sections that illuminate the radiance and vitality of joy.
Joy
by Clarissa Scott Delany
Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail,
Like the roistering wind
That laughs through stalwart pines.
It floods me like the sun
On rain-drenched trees
That flash with silver and green.
I abandon myself to joy—
I laugh—I sing.
Too long have I walked a desolate way,
Too long stumbled down a maze
Bewildered.
