Peter B. Cornell
Composer

This composition for a cappella SATB choir (with minimal divisi) offers guidance on how and how not to console a grieving friend. The music progresses at a thoughtful pace and leverages rich chords, as well as silence, to elevate the text by Canadian poet Archibald Lampman (1861-1899). Instead of "rhetoric, nor the stale Worn truths, that are but maddening mockeries To him whose grief outmasters all replies," Lampman offers the wisdom of tenderness, and the comfort that comes by simply being present with another in silence:

Comfort the sorrowful with watchful eyes
    In silence, for the tongue cannot avail.
    Vex not his wounds with rhetoric, nor the stale
Worn truths, that are but maddening mockeries
To him whose grief outmasters all replies.
    Only watch near him gently; do but bring
    The piteous help of silent ministering,
Watchful and tender.    This alone is wise.
So shall thy presence and thine every motion,
The grateful knowledge of thy sad devotion,
    Melt out the passionate hardness of his grief,
And break the flood-gates of the pent-up soul.
He shall bow down beneath thy mute control,
    And take thine hands, and weep, and find relief.