…Give him the choice, give him the best: The best of all's the heart…
American composer James Curnow has set Robert Herrick's beautifully simple poem "Christ's Part" in an appropriately simple style. The mostly homophonic choral passages are punctuated by dramatic piano interludes, but the last line and a half of text are left unaccompanied, with silences, and an opening out of harmony to the final C major chord emphasising the instruction to "Give him the best: The best of all's the heart".
