Paul Sanho Kim

The Treasure

for SATB chorus (2025)

Premiere: Virginia Music Educators Association Conference, Norfolk, Virginia, 2025. Old Dominion University F. Ludwig Diehn Chorale. Nancy K. Klein, conductor.

Duration: 4.5′

The Treasure is a setting of a 1914 poem by English poet Rupert Brooke. Although it was published along with a series of war sonnets relating to World War I (for which he is best known), this particular poem likely related more to his memories of an extended excursion abroad to the United States, Canada, and even the South Seas, just prior to joining the war effort. Writing this poem upon returning home, he scribbled at the top of his manuscript the working titles “Unpacking or Contemplation or The Store or whatever.” However, in the opening lines he refers to when color “goes home into the eyes,” and when “lights that shine are shut again”; while such references could by themselves simply refer to sleep or the closing of a chapter in one’s life, they take on an entirely different connotation in the context of war. Regardless of how it is interpreted, the state of the present is differentiated from the happier memories of the past. The mood of Kim’s composition is accordingly nostalgic in character, portraying memories that are recalled with a surge of fond emotions.