Frostiana

Frostiana: Seven Country Songs is a piece for mixed chorus and piano composed in 1959 by Randall Thompson.

Thompson later scored the piece for chamber orchestra and chorus; this version was first performed on April 23, 1965.

Thompson was commissioned by the town of Amherst to write a piece commemorating its bicentennial in 1959.

In the end, the composer selected seven poems, with which he constructed a seven-movement suite of choral art songs: As the male and female choruses rehearsed separately, Thompson structured the work so that they sang together only in three of the seven movements; each of the other four was scored for either male voices or female voices alone.

A number of recordings of Frostiana exist, and it is still performed with some frequency.