SKU: OU.9780193953956
ISBN 9780193953956. 12 x 8 inches.
For SSATB unaccompanied This piece was cited as an example of good church music in S.S.Wesley's pamphlet about the state of church music in 1849. The text had significance for Samuel Wesley as these were the last words said to him by his father. He uses the unusual key (for the time) of C sharp minor, giving the work a special intensity.
SKU: HL.49017965
ISBN 9790001154536. 9.0x12.0x0.45 inches. Latin - German.
Many pieces with a classical cycle of movements lead to an examination of baroque counterpoint in the form of a fugue. Widmann's fifth string quartet, which closes his first cycle in this genre like a finale, wants to remain a deliberately tentative 'Versuch uber die Fuge', through it's dialogue with the singing voice's quotation from the Bible: 'That which is, is far off and exceedingly deep. Who can find it out? - Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas!'.
SKU: CA.738620
ISBN 9790007166298. Text language: Latin.
The composition of Verba Ecclesiastes begun in 2002 as a result of a comission from my friend Gary Graden. For many years I've found those words from the Old Testament very fascinating - as everyone knows, I'm not alone. Vanity of vanities! All is vanity! Writers, painters and filmmakers have for centuries been dealing with the subject and I found it high time to set the famous words to music. The suite, for soloists, choir and violoncello, consists of six movements, each one enlighting a different view of life and afterlife, and also, as Matthew Arnold puts it of human misery. Yet the suite is full of hope and humanity, specially recognizable in the two central parts, Dulce lumen and Omnia tempus habent. The music was completed in 2009. (Michael Waldenby).