Premiered by the University of Louisville Collegiate Chorale under the direction of Katie Jordan, in partial fulfillment of her M.M. in Choral Conducting.
Soprano Soloist: Molly Melahn
Dedicated to Ms. Jordan’s mom, grandmother, and piano teacher for always encouraging her to take the road less traveled.
Program Notes: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was originally published in 1915 in the August edition of The Atlantic Monthly, and it was included as the opening poem in his first poetry collection Mountain Interval in 1916. It serves both as one of his earliest and most well- known poems, enduring over a century in the poetic canon as a powerful reminiscence on difficult and complex choices in one’s life, knowing that they may alter everything else to come. When I set texts, I always obsess over the nuances of phrasing implied by the words and how to transcribe the poet’s intentions into my scores. Early on in my work on this piece, I was fortunate to come across a recording of Frost reciting the poem, so I was able to use his phrasings and text stress as inspiration for my own decisions. Still, I strove to make this piece not only a representation of how Frost sounded, but how Frost made me feel. All of his work is full of subtlety, and throughout this poem, he captures a wide range of the human emotional palette that I sought to evoke. Frost’s poetry is some of the most intellectually and emotionally rewarding work I have ever studied, and with more and more of his work finally entering the public domain, I hope that more 21st-century composers begin their own reckoning with his work and how they can reimagine it for audiences around the world. –Benjamin Carter
The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.