Tin, Christopher - I Shall Not See the Shadows
Movement X from The Lost Birds
Instrumentation: SATB, Piano
“I Shall Not See the Shadows” is based on Christina Rossetti's poem “When I Am Dead My Dearest.” It portrays death at its most indifferent--unnoticed, unheralded, unremembered. It suggests that forgetting is a form of extinction, too--that the finality of species lies not in the death of its last remaining members, but in the failure to preserve their memory.