i thank You God for most this amazing day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4D58yXLWro

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of allnothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

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We spent a lot of time in the past few weeks translating sound to visual art. In a similar way, Eric Whitacre translated a poem into sound. This beautiful poem by e. e. cummings has a lot of visual imagery that Whitacre successfully captures in the song, in my opinion. I encourage you to listen to the whole song, immersing yourself in the multi-part harmonies and the rich, cluster chords.

In particular, listen to 2:44. The leaps in the sopranos and altos paints the image of "wings," does it not? This is perhaps my favorite and the clearest example of how Whitacre transcends medium in this song. I'd love to hear what you think of the song and its efficacy in vocally painting a picture that the words of the poem paint.