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- ARTWORK
- Poems
- Maverick
- Hobie Adventure Island
1 The Heritage
2 Life
3 The Flower Girl
4 It Is Not
5 Inward Light
6 To His Coy Mistress
7 Eternity
8 Everyone Sang
Songs of Time
This work came into being as a result of a successful application to the arts for everyone scheme (part of the lottery grants) whose idea was to bring together the Occasional Singers, the Imperial College Symphony Orchestra (with Richard Dickins) and an original, new score. , a group (in this case quite large) of expectant performance, and even for the first time in my life, a small fee. It has been hard to find enough quality time, energy and concentration that a full-scale work demands, on top of my work, but the tremendous opportunity of writing for so many eager and talented performers helped hugely.
I researched many texts and made several decisions, even starting composing: (the Rime of the Ancient Mariner; the Eve of St Agnes; Oberon’s Palace; Goblin Market; An Hymne of Heavenly Beauty (Spencer); etc). Copyright permission to set TS Eliot’s Ash Wednesday was refused; I made up a collection of poems entitled “The Conversation Of Prayers” comprising poems of Dylan Thomas, William Blake and Henry Vaughan, but found the Thomas to lyrical to set to music. In the end it was the sheer urgency of the summer months flying by that helped me to select the poetry which comprises songs of time, but the decision to stay even with these texts and commit myself to the competition was certainly not an easy one to make without the panic of this September’s deadline.
The texts have a strong common theme, expressing much of my own philosophy: the passage of Time add our mortality dictate a necessity to get on with and enjoy, if possible, see here-and-now most eloquently put by the Andrew Marvell extract (to his coy mistress). Dylan Thomas two, in one of the poems of his that I came near to setting, used some of the same imagery: wild men who caught and so the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, do not go gentle into that good night. Much of the language of the poems in songs of time concerns, flowers and song; my music attempts to highlight these symbolic images.
Of the eight movements, six have been written since early June 1997, in time for the first choral rehearsal in mid July. Two of the songs are re-workings: the flower girl was written in 1988, without the chorus part since added, and inward light dates from 1995 and was originally an unaccompanied motet. I invested much thought into the integrating of all the movements into a unified whole, and there are consequently numerous cross references – melodic, harmony, and a germinal motif that occurs in many of the movements. I have linked literary ideas from different poems by using common motifs, (motto seems), in a way first time by the 19th-century Romantic composers (Berlioz with the idees fixes, Wagner with the leitmotif). The coming together of these ideas is carefully considered and answer movements to you
One often hears complaints in choral/vocal music about clarity of some text. It has always seemed to me that the text itself will often be a clear, especially when set, for example, polyphonic very with different bits of text in different voices at the same time. Of course the texts (especially in songs of time) are hugely important, but it is the essence of the texts that should be borne in mind; the music is directly related at all times to the meaning of the text, and as one becomes familiar with the music, the full relationship will become better understood. I do not think it is valid, in this sort of work, to expect to hear all the words.
The soprano soloist is Jenny Hockey [now 'Bartlett] who had been a student at Weymouth College and who went to Cardiff to develop her fabulous singing technique. I have all but lost touch with Jenny, as she went abroad with her husband to do missionary work. But how grateful I am to her, as, along with Richard Dickins' splendid Imperial College students, she produced a flawless and wonderfully expressive performance of my work.
[to be continued....]
I researched many texts and made several decisions, even starting composing: (the Rime of the Ancient Mariner; the Eve of St Agnes; Oberon’s Palace; Goblin Market; An Hymne of Heavenly Beauty (Spencer); etc). Copyright permission to set TS Eliot’s Ash Wednesday was refused; I made up a collection of poems entitled “The Conversation Of Prayers” comprising poems of Dylan Thomas, William Blake and Henry Vaughan, but found the Thomas to lyrical to set to music. In the end it was the sheer urgency of the summer months flying by that helped me to select the poetry which comprises songs of time, but the decision to stay even with these texts and commit myself to the competition was certainly not an easy one to make without the panic of this September’s deadline.
The texts have a strong common theme, expressing much of my own philosophy: the passage of Time add our mortality dictate a necessity to get on with and enjoy, if possible, see here-and-now most eloquently put by the Andrew Marvell extract (to his coy mistress). Dylan Thomas two, in one of the poems of his that I came near to setting, used some of the same imagery: wild men who caught and so the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, do not go gentle into that good night. Much of the language of the poems in songs of time concerns, flowers and song; my music attempts to highlight these symbolic images.
Of the eight movements, six have been written since early June 1997, in time for the first choral rehearsal in mid July. Two of the songs are re-workings: the flower girl was written in 1988, without the chorus part since added, and inward light dates from 1995 and was originally an unaccompanied motet. I invested much thought into the integrating of all the movements into a unified whole, and there are consequently numerous cross references – melodic, harmony, and a germinal motif that occurs in many of the movements. I have linked literary ideas from different poems by using common motifs, (motto seems), in a way first time by the 19th-century Romantic composers (Berlioz with the idees fixes, Wagner with the leitmotif). The coming together of these ideas is carefully considered and answer movements to you
One often hears complaints in choral/vocal music about clarity of some text. It has always seemed to me that the text itself will often be a clear, especially when set, for example, polyphonic very with different bits of text in different voices at the same time. Of course the texts (especially in songs of time) are hugely important, but it is the essence of the texts that should be borne in mind; the music is directly related at all times to the meaning of the text, and as one becomes familiar with the music, the full relationship will become better understood. I do not think it is valid, in this sort of work, to expect to hear all the words.
The soprano soloist is Jenny Hockey [now 'Bartlett] who had been a student at Weymouth College and who went to Cardiff to develop her fabulous singing technique. I have all but lost touch with Jenny, as she went abroad with her husband to do missionary work. But how grateful I am to her, as, along with Richard Dickins' splendid Imperial College students, she produced a flawless and wonderfully expressive performance of my work.
[to be continued....]
(c) 2009 Rick Birley
