SKU: GI.WW1859
UPC: 785147032960. English. Text Source: Matthew 11:28-30.
Come unto me…and ye shall find rest unto your souls. These words, spoken by Jesus, offer the promise of unrivaled rest. This lovely work will be a nice challenge for more advanced TTBB choirs.
SKU: PR.312416820
UPC: 680160050376. 8.5 x 11 inches.
Chen Yi’s most performed and most beloved choral music is a series of 10 Chinese folk songs adapted for S.A.T.B. Chorus (published in 3 volumes: 312-41731, 312-41732, 312-41733). This special version is a setting of the familiar collection, adapted for children’s chorus and strings.Remembering when I studied composition in the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, I learned to sing hundreds of Chinese folk songs collected from more than twenty provinces and fifty ethnic groups, and went to countryside to collect original folk music every year. I got to know that the folk songs are a mirror of people’s daily lives, their thoughts and sentiments, local customs and manners. They are sung in regional dialects and use the idioms of everyday speech with their particular intonations, accents and cadences. This correlation between speech and music distinguishes folk songs of one region from another. I learned all songs by heart and sang them back in the exams every week. They melted in my blood and became my natural music language. The more I walk into the music life,the more I treasure the rich culture I have learned from my homeland. When I became the Composer-in-Residence of Chanticleer and was invited to write the first work for its concert program, as well as another version for its Singing-In-The-Schools program, I decided to introduce A Set of Chinese Folk Songs to my American audiences, and add a new flavor to Chanticleer’srich repertoire. The work includes ten folk songs, taken from eight provinces (Anhui, Shaanxi, Yunnan, Shanxi, Taiwan, Sinkiang, Jiangsu and Guizhou) and five ethnic groups (Han, Hasake, Uighur, Miao and Yi). I arranged them for choirs (men’s or children’s chorus) with various combinations in voices, to be sung mostly in Chinese, some in English.  From the mysterious mountain songs originally sung in the open air with high and long notes that can carry over great distances, the sweet and delicate melodies of young love compared with nature, the humorous antiphony by little children, and the lively dancing tune by villagers, you may get an idea of various music styles in Chinese folk songs according to geographic, ethnic and linguistic differences, and appreciate the beauty of the Chinese folk music. The pure choir sound and the sophisticated singing by Chanticleer, in terms of pitches, language and musical expressions, really attract and inspire me to create some more new works in the years to come. In thisedition of A Set of Chinese Folk Songs for standard SATB mixed choir (with piano rehearsal score), I divided these ten songs into three volumes. They are Fengyang Song, The Flowing Stream, Guessing, Thinking of My Darling, Mayila, Jasmine Flower, Riding on a Mule, Awariguli, Diu Diu Deng, andMountain Song and Dancing Tune.—Chen Yi.
SKU: HL.49003214
ISBN 9790220117282. UPC: 888680784249. 8.25x11.75x0.052 inches. Latin.
Glorious Hill may be performed by a male choir.Text by Pico della Mirandola (1463-1497) from De Hominis Dignitate.Glorious Hill was commissioned by the Hilliard Ensemble and first performed by them at its summer Festival of Voices in Lewes, Sussex, in August 1988. It was the first piece I wrote for the ensemble and I focused on the singers' unique ability to move with ease from early music to tonal music of the present day. There were techniques which I asked for which I hardly needed to notate - the staggered breathing of the two tenors to supply a continuous unbroken held note for example - and the piece moves between passages for solo voices and sections of highly chromatic homophony, almost as if the music were switching between the 12th century of Perotin and the 16th century of Gesualdo. Each of the four voices is given its own solo passage, sometimes accompanied, sometimes quietly supported by the other voices.The title, Glorious Hill comes from the name of the small-town Mississippi setting of Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. I wrote the music for the 1987 production of this play at the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, the first time I had written any incidental music for the stage. Williams makes very specific demands in terms of music and there is one particularly powerful scene, the penultimate one, throughout which music and atmospheric sound effects are continuous. The principle character Alma argues passionately about the vital importance of human choice with the man to whom she has, too late, admitted her love. I watched this section every night throughout the 4 week run of the play watching the different ways in which the actress, Frances Barber, played the scene. There is a powerful emotional and philosophical connection between the imagery of this scene and a passage from the Renaissance philosopher Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man which forms the text of Glorious Hill. This passage has been described as one of the few passages in Renaissance philosophy to treat human freedom in a modern way. The text, which is sung in Latin, is addressed by God to Adam before the fall from grace.Gavin Bryars.
SKU: HL.35030548
ISBN 9781495035913. UPC: 888680082222. 6.75x10.5 inches. Pamela Stewart/Greg Gilpin.
Premiered at Carnegie Hall for the Shawnee Press 75th Anniversary, this powerful and inspirational work, now set for TTBB voices, sings of “hope” described through the phases of life, such as a newborn's cry, the laughter of children, the ashes of the fire of love that has died, the quiet comfort of a dream. Set to haunting and dynamic music with piano or optional orchestra, the work comes to a moving conclusion of “hope is not lost...hope will arise.” Gorgeous, moving and timely.
SKU: BP.BP2168
Printed product. A beautiful, compelling piano accompaniment begins this tender setting of the Robert Browning text. Quiet, conditional statements become a profession of faith as they open into the power of the promise that the everlasting arms my life surround. Perfect for the time of confession and assurance of pardon. Now available arranged for SSAA and TTBB.
SKU: HL.267896
UPC: 888680735395. 6.75x10.5 inches.
From the musical Love Never Dies, here is the sort of power ballad we have come to love from the pen of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Reviewed as a worthy sequel to The Music of the Night, this is a beautiful concert pop arrangement full of power and emotion.
