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Unter dayne vayse shtern : Under your White Stars

Instruments

Instruments, with texts by Madeleine L’Engle, was commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association, Eastern Division. The piece comprises two contrasting movements. “The Sky Is Strung With Glory” is fiery, energetic, and almost manic as the speaker attempts to describe music’s power and control. “Hold Me Against The Dark” is much more subdued and tranquil, featuring lush harmonies as the speaker describes her relationship to the vastness of music. The piece was premiered in 2018 by the ACDA East Honor Choir under the direction of David Fryling, with pianist Timothy Plambeck. Duration: 7:00Instruments, with texts by Madeleine L’Engle, was commissioned by the American Choral Directors Association, Eastern Division. The piece comprises two contrasting movements. “The Sky Is Strung With Glory” is fiery, energetic, and almost manic as the speaker attempts to describe music’s power and control. “Hold Me Against The Dark” is much more subdued and tranquil, featuring lush harmonies as the speaker describes her relationship to the vastness of music. The piece was premiered in 2018 by the ACDA East Honor Choir under the direction of David Fryling, with pianist Timothy Plambeck. Duration: 7:00

Fond Farewell

On the occasion of retirement and relocation to another state, A Fond Farewell was written for a couple who had been longstanding members and strong supporters of their church. The work was premiered by the Hingham Congregational Church Choir of Hingham, Massachusetts under the direction of the composer during a service of celebration in honor of the couple. Though the expressive qualities of the music remain the same, alternative but similar verses have been provided so that the particulars of the text may be more appropriate in different situations.

Pueri Hebræorum

The original composition by Randall Thompson (1899-1984) published in 1928 is for SSAA/SSAA Chorus. A version for SATB/SATB Chorus was published in 1986. The present TTBB arrangement remains true to the treble version, lowering all voice parts one octave. This version for double TTBB chorus is useful under a wide variety of circumstances. It could be used as a Palm Sunday introit or procession. It is a great teaching piece for a school group or TTBB choir festival. It could be doubled on a double quartet of instruments. Duration: 2:30

The Wind in the Willows

While studying at the American Academy in Rome from 1922 to 1925 on the first Damrosch Fellowship, Randall Thompson, fascinated with Kenneth Grahame’s delightful 1908 children’s story The Wind in the Willows, wrote two works based on chapters from it. One is a three-movement string quartet written under the influence of composers including Gian Francesco Malipiero and Alfredo Casella and the most recent European music he heard in Rome and at International Festivals he attended. Along with his five choral Odes of Horace, written at approximately the same time, this work provides us a significant glimpse of Thompson as a composer of chamber music during his formative creative years. Includes score and parts. Duration: 14:00

On Recollecting

These songs were commissioned by the Mohawk Trail Concerts in Charlemont, Massachusetts in honor of Ruth Lloyd Black, their co-founder. The first performance was on August 30, 2015, soon after her death. My recollections of Ruth over some sixty years of friendship were a mixture of laughter and tears. She was a tireless advocate of chamber music, a fine musician, and possessor of a delightfully British sense of humor. Emily Dickinson has her tongue firmly in her cheek in these poems. There is serious purpose under the lyrics, but the surface is pure word-play. She juggles the terms “forgetting” and “recollecting” in each poem until they almost take each other’s meaning. The firstpoem may have accompanied a gift of flowers to a grieving neighbor: she shares the grief, but assuages it with humor. The first statement of “blithe” fingers should be happy, the second drenched in sorrow. I love the way the second poem opens like a puzzle: is she forgetting to remember, or remembering to forget? In either case, it ends with the touching image of a lost child. She continues to confuse us in the third song: is it sunrise or sunset that is “the other one?” The setting sun is her subject in many wonderful poems: here, she would rather “die divinely” in glorious color (echoes of Sarah Bernhardt?) than merely wane away. -Alice Parker