Nothing Gold Can Stay

Instrumentation

flute, alto flute/piccolo, oboe and bass clarinet

Duration

3'45"

Performance Information

Commissioned by Gaby Meza, Emma Gritton, Kenneth Raygor, and Maddie Rogers

Score

View the score

Program Notes

This piece was commissioned by a talented high school wind quartet in northern Texas, who requested a piece inspired by the famous poem by Robert Frost. The piece begins with a descending, “decaying” theme that recurs throughout. Nature is represented by the call of the northern mockingbird – the state bird of Texas – as the day dawns. Flowers push up from the earth with trills from the flutes and bass clarinet, but eventually decay sets in again (“but only so an hour”). Subsequently a regular pulsing rhythm begins, representing primitive Man in Eden. A slithering motif represents the serpent, the corrupting force. Man pushes upward, but the descending serpent counteracts him. Finally, at the climax of the piece, Man is corrupted (“Eden sank to grief”) as the decay theme is stated one last time, dying out into a single note from the bass clarinet. Nothing gold can stay.