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The Peace of Wild Things
Joan Szymko

Joan Szymko is a composer and conductor living in Portland, Oregon, where she directs the Elektra Women's Chorus. Her music is widely performed and published, and she has received numerous awards and commissions for her work. She is particularly well-known for her choral music, which often explores themes of social justice and environmentalism.

"The Peace of Wild Things", composed in 2007, is set to the poetry of Wendell Berry, a renowned writer and environmental activist. Berry's text contemplates the beauty and solace of nature, and the ways in which we can find peace in its midst.

Szymko's loves to use text painting, or matching the music to the meaning of the words, and this is particularly effective in this piece speaking to our need for connection with nature. Szymko's skillful setting of Berry's poetry, combined with her inspired musical language, creates a work that is both emotionally powerful and spiritually uplifting.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence  of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
The Peace of Wild Things
Joan Szymko

Joan Szymko is a composer and conductor living in Portland, Oregon, where she directs the Elektra Women's Chorus. Her music is widely performed and published, and she has received numerous awards and commissions for her work. She is particularly well-known for her choral music, which often explores themes of social justice and environmentalism.

"The Peace of Wild Things", composed in 2007, is set to the poetry of Wendell Berry, a renowned writer and environmental activist. Berry's text contemplates the beauty and solace of nature, and the ways in which we can find peace in its midst.

Szymko's loves to use text painting, or matching the music to the meaning of the words, and this is particularly effective in this piece speaking to our need for connection with nature. Szymko's skillful setting of Berry's poetry, combined with her inspired musical language, creates a work that is both emotionally powerful and spiritually uplifting.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.  I come into the presence  of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.