Sean Griffin

Snow Queen

In the halls of the Snow Queen
and what finally happened there

for 6 sopranos, women’s chorus, string orchestra,
percussion, harp, piano, celesta

Based on the Seventh Story of The Snow Queen
by Hans Christian Andersen
With additional texts compiled by Andrew Infanti

 



La Jolla Symphony and Chorus
Under the direction of David Chase
A Tom Nee Commission

 

Juliana Snapper

Fiona Chatwin
    

I.

Empty vast and cold were the halls of the Snow Queen;
they were lighted by the vivid lights of the aurora.

Texts

I feel that it is just as difficult as it used to be,
and that growing older has served no purpose at all.
All the lost fears are here again.
It is too late, it will be cold soon.
As fairy-glittering as thought, as bright,
twinkles the winter night.
Do you hear this?
glitter such winter nights
Magnificent, but doomed without hope
For not having sung the living regions
When sterile winter radiated its boredom...
Ghost, which is sentenced to this place by its pure brightness
Becomes immobile in the cold, scornful dream

   

Anne-marie Dicci

Nina Eidsheim
                     

II.

In the midst of its empty, endless hall of snow was a frozen lake,
broken on its surface into a thousand forms; each piece resembled another,
from being in itself perfect as a work of art.
At the center of the lake sat the Snow Queen.
She smiled at him so that he thought he did not know enough yet.

Texts

I turned then and saw before me
and beneath my feet a lake to which icy cold
gave the appearance of glass and not of water.
from their mouths the cold, from their eyes their wicked heart
Thunderous, irate storm clouds glowingly
Swirled around him,
Seven golden constellations
Like candles were glittering in front of him
Come with me, you ; I’ve got to show
A church that’s built of ice and snow!
Of ice and snow!

Lucia Lynn

Laura Mitchell

III.

As he chilled, the frightened boy tried to say a prayer,
but could remember nothing but the multiplication table.
He sat at the feet of the Snow Queen among the ice shards, slowly joining them together in various ways.
He could make the most curious and complete figures – and in his mind, he often spelled out whole words...
but as he froze, there was one word he would never succeed in forming.

Texts

For whom hope steals away and starts up,
a certain coldness and mystery.
But the soul is not the only thing to undergo this exchange.

There was no one inside him,
nothing but the trace of a chill,
a dream dreamt by no one else behind
the face that looks at no other face

 

The Divas

Juliana Snapper and Andrew Infanti
 

Acknowledgments

Made Possible By

Special Thanks

Fiona Chatwin, Paula Cronan, Chaya Czernowin, Anne-marie Dicci, Nina Eidsheim, Andrew Infanti, Joseph Kucera, George Lewis, Lucia Lynn, Laura Mitchell, Carol Plantamura, Juliana Snapper, Catherine Sullivan, UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, The Women of the La Jolla Symphony Chorus

This piece is dedicated to Doris Griffin