Make Much of Time

Composer Notes

When Flagstaff Symphony conductor Harold Weller approached me about writing a secular cantata, I suggested a work “celebrating life.” Make Much of Time has six movements. Movements 1, 3, 4, and 6 of use poems by Robert Herrick, movement 2 uses a poem by William Shakespeare, and 5 one by Henry Wadworths Longfellow.

The cantata urges us to enjoy life here-and-now. Herrick celebrates the daily pleasures of earthly existence, reminding us that “Our time is short,” and that “this same flower that smiles to-day, To-morrow will be dying.” He tells Corinna that it is a “profanation” to stay in when she could go “a Maying.” He urges her to join him, “Come, let us go, while we are in our prime: And take the harmless folly of the time."

Herrick’s poetic lines are exquisitely lyrical and sensuous. My desire was to write music as delightful as Herrick’s poetry.