Hist Whist

Persichetti was a big fan of the poetry of e.e. cummings, having set a number of texts to music. Four Cummings Choruses, Op. 98, Flower Songs (Cantata No. 6), Op. 157, Glad and Very (5 Cummings Choruses, Cantata No. 5), Op. 129, Spring Cantata (Cantata No. 1), Op. 94, and Two Cummings Choruses, Op. 33 (G. Schirmer) are among his best-known choral works. The two poems in Opus 46 are very dissimilar, while Hist Whist may best be performed in a Halloween concert ("little ghost-things," "twitchy witches," "the old woman with the wart on her nose"), This Is the Garden is a flowing, layered, multi-colored descriptive choral. The Two cummings Choruses was premiered at the 1952 MTNAConference in Dallas, TX by the Sigma Alpha Iota Chorus.