In effect it is this: that I love you (for SATB choir and piano) (2024) - Ethan Soledad [Score] 

Premiered and commissioned by the Young New Yorkers' Chorus, conductor Alex Canovas as part of its Competition for Young Composers 2024.
This piece is inspired by a love letter written by renowned WWI poet Wilfred Owen to his colonel, mentor, and fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon. Both literary legends were known for their raw depictions of the war in their poetry with Sassoon serving as a major influence to Owen’s own work. Through this piece I sought to portray the passionate, unrelenting love between the two which persisted in a world full of so much pain and violence. Sadly, Wilfred Owen died before the end of the war and Siegfried Sassoon lived with that guilt for the rest of his life. At the end of the piece, the choir repeats the words “in effect it is this: that I love you” except the last time they say “in effect it is this: that I love” and the "you" goes unsaid to represent a love and a life that was cut far too short.
Excerpt of Wilfred Owen’s letter to Siegfried Sassoon. 27 November 1917. Public domain.
“Know that since mid-September, when you still regarded me as a tiresome little knocker on your door, I held you as Keats + Christ + Elijah + my Colonel + my father-confessor + Amenophis IV in profile.
What's that mathematically?
In effect it is this: that I love you, dispassionately, so much, so very much, dear Fellow, that the blasting little smile you wear on reading this can't hurt me in the least.
If you consider what the above Names have severally done for me, you will know what you are doing. And you have fixed my Life - however short. You did not light me: I was always a mad comet; but you have fixed me. I spun round you a satellite for a month, but I shall swing out soon, a dark star in the orbit where you will blaze. It is some consolation to know that Jupiter himself sometimes swims out of Ken!”
Score purchase:
www.jwpepper.c...