SKU: CF.CM9380
ISBN 9780825897788. UPC: 798408097783. 6.875 x 10.5 inches. Text: Nikki Giovanni. Nikki Giovanni.
Nikki Giovanni's descriptive text is masterfully captured through the writing of David Hiser, new to the Carl Fischer choral catalog. While not terribly challenging, the vocal part is somewhat whimsical and terribly fun to sing! Text and melody coupled with the wonderfully playful piano accompaniment make this piece a dynamite addition to any concert or festival.
SKU: FP.FWS11
ISBN 9790570503995.
Eternal Summer is Stephen Wilkinson's sequel to Sunlight on the Garden. It features songs written in the composer's eighties and nineties, elegantly set by recorder virtuoso John Turner. As simply put in a review in the Yorkshire Post, 'In the field of choral music, Stephen Wilkinson is a genius'.
SKU: FP.FMJ02
ISBN 9790570503896.
A wonderfully balanced and yet contrasting set of songs for baritone voice and piano, inspired by Sir John Manduell’s long-standing love of French renaissance verse.In the first, perhaps the most often quoted of Ronsard's poems, the poet invites young Mignonne to come and look at the purple rose and to realise that her beauty like the rose's will fade all too soon. Du Bellary's poem is redolent of late summer heat and haze as the thresher of the title calmly pursues his work. The Marot is a brief exercise in courteous mockery as the poet chides his ailing lady upon her gastronomic self-indulgence and warns her of the inevitable consequences upon her figure.Finally published in 2013, Trois Chansons is one of the of the composer’s earliest surviving works, written while he was studying with the late Sir Lennox Berkely as a postgraduate student at the Royal Academy of Music. The first performance was given by Beverley Humphreys at the Royal Academy of Music in 1956.
SKU: HL.1197761
UPC: 196288134930. 6.75x10.5x0.019 inches.
The Out from the Shadows Choral Series brings you “Summer Is Gone,†a new setting of British poet Christina Rosetti's 1862 poem “Bitter for Sweet.†The composer, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, displays superb control of text painting and dynamics, creating vocal lines as natural as speech. In perfect harmony with Rosetti's text, falling chromatic figures tossed back and forth among voice parts create an inescapable sense of decay and sorrow. Taylor's harmonic rhythm conveys the latent impression of time stretching and constricting. A truly masterful work, this piece makes for a great festival or competition performance. A fun challenge for an accomplished chamber or larger choir, and a memorable addition to any concert. Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) was an English-born composer and conductor who hailed from an English and African musical family. After discovering his inherent musical ability, Coleridge-Taylor's family arranged for him to study at the Royal College of Music under composition professor Charles Villiers Stanford. After completing his degree, Coleridge-Taylor was appointed a professor at the Crystal Palace School of Music and became the conductor of the Croydon Conservatoire Orchestra. With his compositions, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor sought to draw from traditional African music and integrate it into the classical tradition, in a similar fashion to Brahms and Dvorak with Hungarian and Bohemian music. He was a prolific composer and a well-respected conductor in England and America, even touring in America and being received at the White House by President Theodore Roosevelt. His most celebrated work was his cantata Hiawatha's Wedding Feast. On his death, close friend and poet Alfred Noyes said, “Too young to die: his great simplicity, his happy courage in an alien world, his gentleness, made all that knew him love him.â€.
SKU: GI.G-10231
ISBN 9781622774456.
On warm summer nights, I listen to crickets sing their love songs to God... Penned by American poet Robert Bode, these thoughtful words and the poem from which they are taken inform the title for this book. Bode has long been a sought-after poet, providing deeply moving words for choral and solo music, many of which are included here. This collection of Bode’s lyric poetry displays the poet’s affection for the things of this world, both physical and emotional. “Songs†of morning, evening, nature, love, music, inspiration, and humor lift up and inspire thought. Most notably, the section focused on songs of justice, war, and healing offers many important messages for this time. Robert Bode is the Artistic Director of Choral Arts Northwest, a semi-professional chamber chorus in Seattle. In 2010, Bode and Choral Arts NW received the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence, presented by Chorus America. His poems are performed by choirs and soloists worldwide.
SKU: FG.55011-455-5
ISBN 9790550114555.
This cycle of carols, to the poetry of Christina Rossetti, was assembled piecemeal over a number of years, gradually acquiring a larger dramatic and harmonic arch shape as new settings were added. I was particularly attracted to Rossetti's conflation of the dark, fallow winter landscape with that of the soul waiting for salvation. The cycle traces the long nights of watchfulness before Christmas, with the great event constantly deferred, only glimpsed periodically in different visions before the music turns inward again to contemplation. The opening carol embodies this spirit, with passages of diffuse, roving harmony interspersed with meditative, lyrical pedals, calling out the night watch and dreaming of a far-off summer of the spirit. Earth Grown Old is a kind of double carol, setting two complete poems, their lines at first presented separately as a still, expectant chorale and a jubilant dance, then progressively interwoven toward a fervent climax before once again receding into quiet. In the bleak mid-winter, which sets a highly compressed version of Rossetti's original poem, presents an enfeebled landscape frozen in time, in dire need of deliverance. A gentle melody weaves its way through static drones, broken by an angels' chorus announcing the joy to come. Love Came Down at Christmas ends the waiting, with its gently falling, overlapping lines building to a final revelation, the mystery of Christmas at last made real.
