Format : Vocal Score
The Welsh folksong Tra Bo Dau arranged by Meirion Wynn Jones for SATB choir. Piano accompaniment is included for rehearsal purposes only. The collecting of Tra Bo Dau in 1906 by the Bangor academic J. Lloyd Williams (1854-1945) from the singing of his wife and sister-in-law proved to be an act of great consequence for the future of folk music in Wales - leading as it did to the founding of the Welsh Folk Song Society. The song promoted by Williams at the National Eisteddfod in Caernarfon that year grew quickly in popularity despite the commentator Frank Kidson claiming the melody to be 'a corruption of 'The Cobler of Castlebury'' byCharles Dibdin (1745-1814). More recent analysis points to a similarity in the song's opening phrase only. - Meirion Wynn Jones
SKU: HL.277282
UPC: 840126915006. 6.75x10.5 inches.
Program note:Looking Up is a piece for large chorus and orchestra, and is in three sections, played without pause. In the 16th century, a variety of psalters in meter were printed in England, with the idea of making psalm-singing something that could happen easily at home, with the rhyming meter being an aid to memorization. These translations are wonderful exercises in brevity and sometimes clumsy rhymemaking, and were usually prefaced by a lengthy explanation as to their merits; the title of one of the first such volumes in English is: The Psalter of Dauid newely translated into Englysh metre in such sort that it maye the more decently, and wyth more delyte of the mynde, be reade and songe of al men. I thought it would be appropriate to set one of these introductions, and the first section of Looking Up sets the preface to Thomas Ravenscroft's psalter (1621), in which he writes: “The singing of Psalmes (assay the Doctors) comforteth the sorrowfull, pacifieth the angry, strengtheneth the weake, humbleth the proud, gladdeth the humble, stirres up the slow, reconcileth enemies, lifteth up the heart to heavenly things, and uniteth the Creature to his Creator.”It begins meditatively, but eventually grows agitated and fervent, with a vision of the “quire of Angels and Saints” “redoubling anddescanting” - an ecstatic and terrifying vision of the skies opening up. Ravenscroft then encourages the use of instrumental musicfor worship, at which point, a long, acrobatic orchestral interlude with jagged edges antagonizes the choir, who sing a kind of private, anxious meditation on two pitches.One of the most delicious biblical texts is an Apocryphal prayer known as the Benedicite or the Prayer of the Three Children (the same who were rescued by an angel after King Nebuchadnezzar tried to have them burnt in an oven for not bowing to his image). The text is repetitive, obsessive, and a gift to composers - each line is an invocation of an element of the natural world, followed by the phrase, “blesse ye the Lord, praise him & magnify him for ever.” In Looking Up, the setting begins with three solo voices, and then grows to include the whole choir, itemizing the whole of creation. The idea that these boys are spared from the furnace and then five minutes later are saying, “O ye the fire and warming heate, blesse ye the Lord...” has always felt very loaded to me, and the orchestra plays with this conflict between joyful praise and a more terrible (in the 16th-century sense) awefor the divine.The text for the third, and shortest, section is taken from Christopher Smart's (1722-1771) A Song to David, purportedly written during his confinement in a mental asylum. This ode to King David points out how David, as the author of some of the Psalms, observes the whole world from the “clustering spheres” to the “nosegay in the vale.&rdquo.
SKU: CA.7010073
ISBN 9790007162870. Key: E minor. Language: German. Text: Fleming, Paul. Text: Paul Fleming.
Score available separately - see item CA.7010000.
SKU: CA.320520
ISBN 9790007156862.
SKU: ZB.ZE-3080
ISBN 9783940745408.
Traditional German Chorals in lively, modern Arrangements for Mixed Choir and accompaniment! Affordable vocal score without piano part.
SKU: BA.BA05897-90
ISBN 9790006563050. 27 x 19 cm inches. Language: German. Preface: Ute Poetzsch.
Chorale settings form a central part of Telemann's oeuvre. His 1754 setting of the church hymn Christus, der ist mein Leben, based on Melchoir Vulpius' melody from the Hamburg Hymnal, is especially well-suited to display his mastery in depicting the words of the chorale. The so-calledAusfullungsbass(a vocal bass added to the principal bass in tutti passages) was probably necessitated by the acoustical properties of Hamburg's churches. This is the first Urtext edition of this highly successful chorale setting which is based on Georg Philipp Telemann Musical Works. The score contains a realisation of the continuo part.