The Flowers That Bloom in Spring (Maggie Furtak)
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- (Posted 2023-01-03) CPDL #72146:
- Editor: Maggie Furtak (submitted 2023-01-03). Score information: Letter, 8 pages, 222 kB Copyright: Personal
- Edition notes:
General Information
Title: The Flowers That Bloom in Spring
Composer: Maggie Furtak
Lyricist: Maggie Furtak
Number of voices: 4vv Voicing: SATB
Genre: Secular, Partsong
Language: English
Instruments: A cappella
First published: 2023
Description: Includes a piano reduction for rehearsal purposes or concert support. Moderate difficulty. No extremes of range. Follows the lifecycle of the bumble bee. Only new bumble bee queens survive the winter each year. Each new queen must carefully select a nest site after emerging from winter dormancy and start a new colony all alone. For the first few weeks of spring, she must divide her time between laying eggs, gathering and preparing nectar and pollen, and warming and caring for her new offspring. If her nest site proves to be too far from a continual succession of blooms in early spring, her babies will succumb to the cold while she is away from the nest gathering food for them. Until the first generation of workers are old enough to take over some of the tasks of caring for the group, and the riot of summer flowers makes food supplies more sure, her nest's survival is tenuous, but if all goes well, by the time summer wanes, hundreds of her children will be busy among the blooms, and her own new queens will be preparing to disperse and carry on the cycle the next year. A pollinator theme for a concert organized around environment and nature.
External websites:
Original text and translations
English text
The flowers that bloom in spring,
how quickly they will fade.
They’re gone as fast as breathing,
and precious as the air,
and every new mother bee
lives in great anxiety.
Search too long,
her children freeze.
Stay home to warm them with her own beating heart,
and they will starve.
But summertime is coming,
the sizzle and the heat
of rank growth and heady flowers that bloom,
the thousand robin dawn, and a million thrumming wings.
Breathe deep.
Devotion brings the sweetness of children,
countless as the meadow grasses,
shining in the sun.