SKU: PE.EP68578

ISBN 9790300759630. English.

Of Time and Passing (2016) is a cycle of three choral songs written specifically for the London-based ensemble, VOCES8, taking into consideration their versatilityand ability to beautifully intone a range of vocal colors with precision and grace.

The first song, I. Life, sets my translation of the poem A Vida by Brazilian poet Olavo Bilac (1865-1918), a poet I discovered while studying Brazilian Portuguese at the University of Michigan. I was drawn both to the simplicity of the text and to the possibilities of teasing out dual contrasting moods. In the beginning and end, this song explores a texture that is very much alive: wave-like contours, throbbing sounds, and plenty of flowing movement. Rising eighth-note motives in particular emphasize the fleetingness of life. But in the middle of the song, the listener is given a slowed-down atmosphere to savor life's beauty.

II. To Everything a Season capitalizes on VOCES8's ability to effectively interpret popular genres a cappella. This ancient text is taken from Ecclesiastes (dated around 300 B.C.) but I set it to a modern, rhythmically-regular and percussive pop-style idiom. Since popular music in whatever era is designed
to appeal to a specific ?present time?, it is by its very nature ephemeral, and therefore seemed an apt metaphor to evoke the transitory nature of seasons.

III. Into Your Hands, confines the writing into no more than four parts, often with octave unisons.This creates a more direct and word-focused setting in which the Psalmist?s urgent words are placed at the forefront. Largely homophonic, this song is at times chorale-like, at times madrigal-like,
finally relinquishing it?s tension into peaceful rest, proclaiming ?You have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God??

- Daniel Knaggs

SKU: HL.49045601

ISBN 9790001166256. UPC: 841886032682. 7.5x10.75x0.067 inches. Latin. Psalm 89.

About 40 compositions, including half for accompanying and unaccompanied choir, are currently in the catalog of young Polish composer Katarzyna Danel (born 1992). After several national composition competitions, she won the 13th International Composition Competition Musica Sacra Nova with her Misericordias Domini for eight-part mixed choir a cappella. The complex spiritual a cappella choir is based on the Gregorian chant of the same name (Psalm 89,2). Three principal structures are characteristic of this Latin-language choral piece: on the one hand, aleatoric sound clouds in major pentatonic scales, soundally supported by long-held organum-like notes taken from the Gregorian choral melody; As well as a renaissance-like polyphony, which is linked with modern harmony; And finally long static chords that blend into harmony and space. A wonderfully mystical-spherical composition, which also gives the individual performer the possibility of individual design through the ad libitum passages marked in the sheet music.