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 that would sing, dance, and delight as wonderfully as Herrick’s poetry does.