This five-movement work for piano, string quintet, oboe, horn, mezzo and soprano soloists, and SATB choir was commissioned in 2020 by Gary Packwood, director of choral studies at Mississippi State University, and dedicated to the Mississippi State University State Singers for the opening of the new music building. The piece is based on Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. These writings, along with others, represent the “greatest lyrics of his maturity. In these poems Wordsworth presents a fully developed yet morally flexible picture of the relationship between human beings and the natural world.

When Wordsworth completed this work in 1804, he called it simply “Ode,” and the poem carried this title when it was published in 1807. In 1815, when the poem was republished, Wordsworth expanded the title to “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.” Intimations means hints, inklings, or indirect suggestions.

Track Listing:

Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood

1. The glory and freshness of a dream
2. Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call
3. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
4. Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight
5. Of the eternal silence

A cappella works by Michael John Trotta

6. Justitiae Domini
7. Ubi Caritas
8. Dies Irae