“Oread Farewell” and Its Many Meanings

One of the great privileges of performing classical music is that you get to delve into pieces written hundreds of years ago and others written within this century. If you’re fortunate you get to read or watch interviews with the composers and lyricists of modern music. Such is the case with the modern choral composer Dan Forrest, whose music my own choir has performed multiple times. We are also familiar with the work of poet/lyricist Anthony Silvestri, who provided the text. “Oread” was featured in our May 2018 concert as the closing piece, performed in the round.

So the first question is, “What’s an oread? And why is Forrest saying good-bye to whatever it is?” First things first. “Oread” is a term from Greek mythology meaning a mountain nymph. (Echo was one such, who was a consort of Zeus and was doomed by Hera, Zeus’s wife, to speak only the last words that had been spoken to her. Thus, when Echo fell in love with Narcissus, she couldn’t tell him how she felt and was forced to watch him falling in love with his own reflection in a pool.) So “oread” would be a suitable name for a mountain itself.

Which brings us to Mount Oread in Lawrenceville, Kansas, a hill on which the University of Kansas is located. The hill’s original name was Hogback Ridge, but this rather unpoetic name was changed in 1866, the same year that the university officially opened. This new university was one of the first in the US to admit men and women equally; the initial preparatory class was composed of 26 girls and 29 boys. So someone came up with the idea of re-naming the hill (it’s actually more of a small mountain) Mount Oread, after the Oread Institute in Massachusetts, an early women’s college.

That’s the historical background for the first word of our selection’s title. On to the second word: “farewell.” Let me quote from the website of the lyrics’ author, Charles Silvestri:

In the Spring of 2007 John Paul Johnson, the Director of Choral Activities at the University of Kansas, approached me with a commission to write a poem in collaboration with composer Dan Forrest which would become a farewell or encore standard for the KU choral program. After a discussion with the composer, I chose as a starting place the English folk song “Barbara Allen.” It seemed plaintive to me, and with a mood evocative of farewells. I chose to use its structure, meter and rhyme-scheme as a base for my poem. I found out that I was influenced by this choice, and the finished poem has the feeling of a folk song. I even toyed with more antiquated forms, like thee and thou, but rejected those in favor of a less formal, but still old-fashioned “ye,” which Dan liked.

For copyright reasons I won’t reproduce the entire poem (you can read it here); I will just say that its ideas look to the past and to the future. The time together has been fleeting and brief. The flowers of spring have now withered in winter’s chill, and the memories of past happiness are now bittersweet. Yet the speaker wishes success upon the departing one, requesting only fond thoughts for himself: I think I may be permitted to include just that final verse, which has a nice little twist in the last line: that the speaker hopes he will be remembered every time the departing one says “farewell” to anyone else.

Now we must part, and fare ye well
In all that ye endeavor!
And last, I pray–fondly think of me,
Whene’er you say, “Farewell.”
© 2007 Charles Anthony Silvestri

Forrest’s music fits the mood of the lyrics perfectly, music that he wrote as his three years of study at the University of Kansas were drawing to a close. He says in his notes, “I spent three wonderful years at the University of Kansas from 2004-2007, studying composition, writing more music than I ever had before, and making lifelong friendships with several of my colleagues.” Forrest implies, and I would agree, that sometimes we more deeply value experiences when we know that they have a limited time span. (To make a crashingly obvious observation, it’s fair to say that all experiences have a limited time span.)

Silvestri and Forrest more than fulfilled their commission to write a piece that could be used as a standard finale for choral programs. It’s not big and showy but instead quiet and reflective, reminding those performing and those listening that a wonderful experience is over, leaving only the memory. I often have that bittersweet feeling myself at the end of a concert.

I wasn’t able to find a good-quality live-action video performance on YouTube, but this one is excellent even without video:

© Debi Simons