Performed March 22, 2026; James Knox Sutterfield, conductor.
Sure on this shining night of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me this side the ground.
The late year lies down the north. All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth. Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone of shadows on the stars.
An author, poet, screenwriter, and film critic, James Agee had mixed success during his lifetime. Though he was regarded as a film critic, his own creative works were largely underappreciated until after his death. His posthumously published autobiographical novel, A Death in the Family, won the Pulitzer Prize, and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, which initially sold very poorly, has since come to be regarded as his masterpiece. Sure on This Shining Night is an excerpt from a longer poem, “Description of Elysium,” and was made famous as a standalone text by Samuel Barber’s art song of the same name. Morten Lauridsen’s warm, contemplative setting has become a favorite of choirs and one of his most famous compositions. The harmony—full of 7th and 9th chords and unresolved suspensions and often featuring inversions (i.e., not having the root of the chord in the bass)—is quintessentially Lauridsen.