Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 4 days ago

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Patrick Klink, tenor
Nelda Clelland, piano
Text and music by Pranav Ranjit
Premiered at Govans Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, 13 April 2025 as part of the presentation "This Is Now" ; many thanks to Marie Herrington for organizing.

“First Frost" is a song depicting a person’s thoughts as they experience the long, sunless northern European winter for the first time. It is a setting of a text that I wrote myself, inspired partially by my own experience of winters in Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland. The harmonic material is freely derived from several 12-tone collections.

Text:
Divided I stand,
Simply lost
Between two worlds.

Beckoning toward my window,
Clad in gleaming white,
The barren trees, swaying
In the winter wind...

Yet I remain in the comfort
Of my heated home,
In a tall, soulless husk
All gravel and sand and stone.

Suddenly the door cracks open;
I feel an unearthly chill.
The frost, reaching out
with its fingertips...

I pause just for a moment,
Considering its embrace,
But my heart lies in another place.

I dream of an Alpine summer,
Breathing the fresh mountain air.
I wonder - where is my true home?
I wish that it were there!