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: PR.312419270
ISBN 9781491137918. UPC: 680160692606. English. Charles Mackay.
Terra Nostra focuses on the relationship between our planet and mankind, how this relationship has shifted over time, and how we can re-establish a harmonious balance. The oratorio is divided into three parts:Part I: Creation of the World celebrates the birth and beauty of our planet. The oratorio begins with creation myths from India, North America, and Egypt that are integrated into the opening lines of Genesis from the Old Testament. The music surges forth from these creation stories into “God’s World” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, which describes the world in exuberant and vivid detail. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “On thine own child” praises Mother Earth for her role bringing forth all life, while Walt Whitman sings a love song to the planet in “Smile O voluptuous cool-breathed earth!” Part I ends with “A Blade of Grass” in which Whitman muses how our planet has been spinning in the heavens for a very long time.Part II: The Rise of Humanity examines the achievements of mankind, particularly since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall” sets an auspicious tone that mankind is on the verge of great discoveries. This is followed in short order by Charles Mackay’s “Railways 1846,” William Ernest Henley’s “A Song of Speed,” and John Gillespie Magee, Jr.’s “High Flight,” each of which celebrates a new milestone in technological achievement. In “Binsey Poplars,” Gerard Manley Hopkins takes note of the effect that these advances are having on the planet, with trees being brought down and landscapes forever changed. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Dirge” concludes Part II with a warning that the planet is beginning to sound a grave alarm.Part III: Searching for Balance questions how we can create more awareness for our planet’s plight, re-establish a deeper connection to it, and find a balance for living within our planet’s resources. Three texts continue the earth’s plea that ended the previous section: Lord Byron’s “Darkness” speaks of a natural disaster (a volcano) that has blotted out the sun from humanity and the panic that ensues; contemporary poet Esther Iverem’s “Earth Screaming” gives voice to the modern issues of our changing climate; and William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” warns us that we are almost out of time to change our course. Contemporary/agrarian poet Wendell Berry’s “The Want of Peace” speaks to us at the climax of the oratorio, reminding us that we can find harmony with the planet if we choose to live more simply, and to recall that we ourselves came from the earth. Two Walt Whitman texts (“A Child said, What is the grass?” and “There was a child went forth every day”) echo Berry’s thoughts, reminding us that we are of the earth, as is everything that we see on our planet. The oratorio concludes with a reprise of Whitman’s “A Blade of Grass” from Part I, this time interspersed with an additional Whitman text that sublimely states, “I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love…”My hope in writing this oratorio is to invite audience members to consider how we interact with our planet, and what we can each personally do to keep the planet going for future generations. We are the only stewards Earth has; what can we each do to leave her in better shape than we found her?
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: LP.OR-9269
UPC: 765762128507.
Twelve arrangements with a mildly contemporary feel have received a fresh treatment from arranger Russell Mauldin. High energy praise - All Ye People; Psalms of Praise Expressive songs of worship - Holy You Are Holy; In the Presence of Jehovah A little southern gospel - Hard Trials Will Soon Be Over; Call Home Joyous songs of the kingdom - Singin' with the Saints; Jesus Lifted Me All this and six more arrangements make Singin' with the Saints a usable energetic compilation that men's choirs ensembles and quartets will love. In a word it's...well DYNAMIC .
