SSA, Piano
“If You Were Coming in the Fall” began as an art song. I loved the poetry, and the melody came to me almost immediatly after reading it. Once it was through, it seemed to lend itself well to ensemble singing, so I set it for treble and mixed choirs.
Emily Dickinson’s poignant poem If You Were Coming in the Fall, captures the tender longing and emotional complexity of waiting for a loved one. Dickinson’s text, written in her characteristic style of concise yet profound imagery, explores themes of love, anticipation, and the passage of time. The poem’s speaker muses on the hypothetical return of a beloved, measuring the wait in vivid metaphors—from counting seasons to unraveling the threads of time itself.
Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet whose innovative and enigmatic verse made her one of the most important figures in American literature. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, she lived a largely reclusive life, producing nearly 1,800 poems, though only a handful were published during her lifetime. Her poetry is characterized by unconventional punctuation, slant rhyme, and concise, striking imagery that explored themes of death, immortality, nature, love, and the inner life of the soul. Though she withdrew from public life, her work reveals a keen intellect and emotional depth, blending wit and intensity in ways that were ahead of her time. After her death, her poetry was gradually published and came to be recognized as foundational to modern American poetry.