Tundra

SATB, piano, optional string quartet
Lyrics: Charles A. Silvestri
Language: English
Duration: 3:30
Publisher: Walton Music

The lyrics for Tundra were written by my frequent collaborator, poet Charles Anthony Silvestri. I asked Tony to write a text based on the title and photos of a part of my native Norway that is very dear to me, the Hardangervidda mountain plateau. It’s pretty close to where my father grew up, in the mountains between Oslo and Bergen.

Hardangervidda is quite barren and intensely beautiful — it is easy to feel that you are treading on sacred land, which Tony describes so evocatively in his text:

Wide, worn and weathered,
Sacred expanse
Of green and white and granite grey;
Snowy patches strewn,
Anchored to the craggy earth,
Unmoving;
While clouds dance
Across the vast, eternal sky.