Environmentally themed Terra Nostra celebrates Earth Day; it was commissioned by the S. F. Choral Society and Piedmont East Bay Children’s Choir in 2015. The performance is led by conductor Stephen Alltop and the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra Chorale and Alice Millar Chapel Choir, February 6 and 8, 2023.
PART I Creation of the World

1. In the Beginning opens with an orchestral percussion, celebrating the planet’s birth and natural beauty. Garrop uses poetry by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Walt Whitman and the Biblical account of creation from Genesis, and relevant myths from India, North America, and Egypt.
2. God’s World is based on a poem by Millay, sung by the Chorus. Earth’s beauty becomes too much for the poet to bear, yet the narrator cannot tolerate losing a single moment.
3. On thine own child is sung by the children to words by Shelley wiith Nature to inspire and permeate the lives of each new being.
4. Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth! by Whitman is sung by the baritone solo.
5. A Blade of Grass by Whitman is sung by the chorus and children. The blade of grass is a manifestation of all time and collective creation.
PART II The Rise of Humanity
6. Locksley Hall for tenor solo with Chorus sets words by Alfred Lord Tennyson celebrating the power of Imagination as it grasps the history of all progress.
7. Railways by Charles Mackay is sung by the male chorus members. A celebration of Science and technology, the poet sees a possibility for human unity.
8. A Song of Speed by William Ernest Henley features baritone solo and Chorus. The poet selects the Mercedes as the vehicle of progress and human triumph, the Speed of excellence.
9. High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. is sung by the Chorus. The poet celebrates the intoxication of flight, its freedom and power to “touch the face of God.”
10. Binsey Poplars for soprano and mezzo-soprano is set to words by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The poet laments the willful destruction of trees and forests, since every stroke diminishes God’s grandeur.
11. A Dirge with words by Shelley requires all soloists and Chorus. The poet takes offense with the world’s sins; Nature suffers the injustice.
PART III Searching for Balance
12. Darkness by Lord Byron calls on the mezzo-soprano and women’s Chorus members for a bleak, pitiless vision of Apocalypse, an eternal epoch of no light. All the world and human efforts may be consumed to find a ray of hope, but in vain.
13. Earth Screaming by Esther Iverern, for tenor and baritone soloists, presents a dire warning set on a Pennsylvania mountain where night creatures issue a collective desert cry. As we consume our planet, we who hide in cities must confront Nature in the open to appreciate the bitter truth.
14. The World is Too Much With Us by Wordsworth requires all soloists and Chorus. Garrop uses only the first 9 lines, the bleak message of Man’s deafness to Nature’s song, since we have “given our hearts away, a sordid boon!” Greed has replaced compassion.
15. The Want of Peace by Wendell Berry is sung by the Chorus; the poet finds no solace in the ambitions of men who consume the world. The poet seeks simple gifts from simple things and acts, rather than “pride” or “excess of power” that lights their way “by burning men.”
16. A Child said, What is the grass by Whitman is sung by a soprano solo. The poet can’t explain Creation’s mystery, of which the grass, in its simplicity, speaks of the Lord and His gift of silent vegetation.
17. There was a child went forth every day by Whitman is sung by the children. The poet celebrates the immediacy of a child’s identification with Existence, that all Creation immerses itself in the spirit of the child and his infinite capacity for faith.
18. A Blade of Grass/I bequeath myself concludes the oratorio Whitman, intoned by Chorus and Children. The grass and the dirt attest to the universality of our Being, and the poet awaits those who will join him in his saving vision of Eternity, in the nexus of Life.