The Fire and the Rosefor SSAATTBB Choir
Music by Eric Guinivan Text by T.S. Eliot Duration: 4 minutes Commissioned by James Madison University with the generous support of the JMU 2021-2022 Shirley Hanson Roberts ’56 and Richard D. Roberts Endowment for Faculty Excellence Performance materials are available from the composer.
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Performance by The Madison Singers
Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy, director |
Score Video
Program Note
Extracted from multiple verses in Little Gidding, the last poem in T. S. Eliot’s epic Four Quartets, fire, and roses are central main images of this poem. Roses, a traditional symbol of English royalty, also represent divine love and mercy. In the poem’s broader context, fire represents the spiritual power capable of either destroying or purifying the human soul and bringing understanding. Eliot incorporates a verse attributed to renowned writer and anchoress Julian of Norwich (b. 1343), whose writings, now known as Revelations of Divine Love, are the earliest known surviving English language works by a woman: “And all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” when the fire that both destroys and redeems us knots together and “the fire and the rose”—divine purification and divine mercy—become one. Guinivan’s use of organizational tempi, the wordless, musing theme in ¾ time that reappears at key moments throughout the work, and the masterful and seamless modulations all underscore the alchemical mysteries and messages of Eliot’s celebrated poetry.
- Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy
- Jo-Anne van der Vat-Chromy