VERTUE
- sung by the Occasional Singers 30/vi/96 in the entrance hall of Kingston Maurward House, this is taken from the CD "A Dorset Affair". This is a very densely composed choral work, with up to 14 independent parts and the widest possible vocal ranges. The tenors soar onto a top B flat and the basses divide into three low, sonorous parts, for the final verse of this wonderful poem by George Herbert [1593 - 1633]:
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright!
The bridal of the earth and sky -
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright!
The bridal of the earth and sky -
The dew shall weep thy fall tonight;
For thou must die.
Sweet rose, whose hue angry and brave
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye,
Thy root is ever in its grave,
And thou must die.
Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
A box where sweets compacted lie,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.
Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like season'd timber, never gives;
But though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.
Sing Bravely
Composed in 1991, Sing Bravely was in response to the untimely death of Peggy Renson, and was first performed by the Weymouth College Singers, to which group Peggy had belonged. The words are by Siegfried Sassoon
Inward Light
This, too, is a Siegfried Sassoon poem which I set in 1994/5. The writing is complex, in many parts, with subtle harmonic shifts that make this difficult to sing. It is also incorporated into Songs of Time, with strings.