Little Voices - Folk Songs: 2-Part Choir: Vocal Album

SKU: PR.312416820

UPC: 680160050376. 8.5 x 11 inches.

Chen Yi’s most performed and most beloved choral music is a series of 10 Chinese folk songs adapted for S.A.T.B. Chorus (published in 3 volumes: 312-41731, 312-41732, 312-41733). This special version is a setting of the familiar collection, adapted for children’s chorus and strings.
Remembering when I studied composition in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, I learned to sing hundreds of Chinese folk songs collected from more than twenty provinces and fifty ethnic groups, and went to countryside to collect original folk music every year.  I got to know that the folk songs are a mirror of people’s daily lives, their thoughts and sentiments, local customs and manners.  They are sung in regional dialects and use the idioms of everyday speech with their particular intonations, accents and cadences.  This correlation between speech and music distinguishes folk songs of one region from another.  I learned all songs by heart and sang them back in the exams every week.  They melted in my blood and became my natural music language.  The more I walk into the music life,the more I treasure the rich culture I have learned from my homeland. When I became the Composer-in-Residence of Chanticleer and was invited to write the first work for its concert program, as well as another version for its Singing-In-The-Schools program, I decided to introduce A Set of Chinese Folk Songs to my American audiences, and add a new flavor to Chanticleer’srich repertoire.  The work includes ten folk songs, taken from eight provinces (Anhui, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Shanxi, Taiwan, Sinkiang, Jiangsu and Guizhou) and five ethnic groups (Han, Hasake, Uighur, Miao and Yi).  I arranged them for choirs (men’s or children’s chorus) with various combinations in voices, to be sung mostly in Chinese, some in English.   From the mysterious mountain songs originally sung in the open air with high and long notes that can carry over great distances, the sweet and delicate melodies of young love compared with nature, the humorous antiphony by little children, and the lively dancing tune by villagers, you may get an idea of various music styles in Chinese folk songs according to geographic, ethnic and linguistic differences, and appreciate the beauty of the Chinese folk music.  The pure choir sound and the sophisticated singing by Chanticleer, in terms of pitches, language and musical expressions, really attract and inspire me to create some more new works in the years to come.  In thisedition of A Set of Chinese Folk Songs for standard SATB mixed choir (with piano rehearsal score), I divided these ten songs into three volumes.  They are Fengyang Song, The Flowing Stream, Guessing, Thinking of My Darling, Mayila, Jasmine Flower, Riding on a Mule, Awariguli, Diu Diu Deng, andMountain Song and Dancing Tune.—Chen Yi.

SKU: CA.221000

ISBN M-007-24681-5.

A compact multi-themed choral collection for unaccompanied mixed chorus - and in the best sense, a best of current song arrangements! With 35 contemporary song arrangements, the choral collection offers the right song for many occasions: for concerts, weddings, and other celebrations, for Christmas time, or even for ending a choir rehearsal with a nocturne. The focus of the collection lies in folk songs, love songs, nocturnes, and Christmas carols. All the song arrangements were composed in the last fifteen years, and were mainly commissioned for Carus choral collections published as part of the LIEDERPROJEKT - the charitable project supporting singing with children. the works of around 30 highly experienced arrangers are brought together in the volume, including Matt hias E. Becker, Ludwig Bohme, Wolfram Buchenberg, Thomas Gabriel, Gunther Martin Gottsche, John Hoybye, Veit Hubner, Burkhard Kinzler, Giacomo Mezzalira, Vytautas Miskinis, Vic Nees, Peter Schindler, Robert Sund, Christoph Schonherr, Jozef Świder and Alan Wilson. Their arrangements reflect the variety of styles - from contemporary arrangements in classic harmonisations to pieces from jazz, pop, folk, and dance music - with which today's composers can breathe new life into traditional melodies and texts. The song repertoire is also distinguished by its wide variety: classics of the German folk song and Christmas carol repertoire (Kein schoner Land, Leise rieselt der Schnee, etc.) are included in the choral collection as well as excursions into the song repertoire of other countries (La vie en rose, Twinkle, twinkle, little star, etc.) All the arrangements are of easy to medium difficulty, so making this new music, with its wide range of styles, accessible to as many choirs as possible. Audio samples of most of the arrangements are available at www.carus-verlag.com/2210 to get to know the works. Complete recordings are available as a separate digital album under the title LIEDER - folksongs for choir on all the popular music platforms. In short, a beautiful-sounding musical treasure trove of outstanding song settings for all sorts of occasions - at an attractive bargain price! 35 song arrangements for unaccompanied mixed choir by leading choral composers well-known tunes in contemporary, fresh styles for concerts, Christmas, weddings and other celebrations, for the end of rehearsals, or as an encore recordings available as a digital album attractive price The many specially commissioned song arrangements underline Carus-Verlag's promotion of new choral music, as impressive an endeavor as the nurturing of the traditional song repertoire. Jan Schumacher.