A Valentine for Hands, a love song for SATB a cappella chorus, sets a text by contemporary poet Annie Finch. Finch describes what a lover’s “warm hands” have “gathered” and “sown”: “gentlest sounds, touches and hours / [...] smallest, most stars—happiest skies—.”

 

A recurring refrain (“building like rain, or returning like seas”) sung by the tenors and basses alternates with melodies sung by the altos & sopranos. It is not until halfway through the piece that the voices finally merge together, and they remain that way—finally united—until the end of the piece.

 

A Valentine for Hands won the 2014 Yale Glee Club Composition Competition and was premiered by the Yale Glee Club (Jeffrey Douma, director; Max Holman, guest conductor). This piece sets a poem from Annie Finch’s book Calendars and is used by permission of the poet and Tupelo Press.

 

Want to program this piece? Preview or purchase A Valentine for Hands here.