Nine Amen and Halleluja Movements-Between 1728 and 1747 Handel composed these nine two-part movements for soprano and instrumental bass. Though speculation exists the occasion for which the pieces were composed as well as the exact date of their composition remain unknown.The soprano sings short liturgical phrases such as ?Amen? ?Allelujah? ?Alleluja amen? or ?Amen alleluia?. The editor has supplied a text for the movement HWV 275 which until now has for reasons unknown been without text. The Amen and Hallelujah movements are in easy keys (using up to one sharp or two flats) and the modulations rarely move to harmonically distant tonal areas. Handel figured the bassline very detailed which playsmostly an accompanying supportive role imitating the voice in a few places. The vocal part is distinguished by the repetition of motives by repeated notes but also by short or extended coloratura. Presumably these movements were intended for use in teaching.Today these short movements of between 25 and 76 bars lend themselves well to use in church services.Based on the Urtext of the ?Halle Handel Edition?Idiomatic realization of the continuo part

This work was commissioned by the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts Ltd. with theaid of funds provided by the John S. Cohen Foundation and the PRS Foundation. The firstperformance was given by Rachel Nicholls and Paul Plummer at St. Andrew’s Church Presteigne on 29 August 2005.Composer's NoteGladestry Quatrains is a setting of 12 short poems by Jo Shapcott from her collection of the same title. It originated in a project for the 2003 Presteigne Festival called A Garland for Presteigne in which 10 composers associated with the Festival were asked to write a short song each celebrating the Welsh border country the choice of poetryranged widely and I chose two of Jo Shapcott’s evocative miniatures (still adding up to slightly less than the timing I had been requested to provide!). As I wrote them I started to make sketches for some more settings from the same collection and the Presteigne Festival of Music and the Arts very kindly commissioned this new larger song-cycle proper for their 2005 Festival. The original pair of poems form the third (Gwaithla Brook) and last (Cefn Hir) of the songs in which the eighth combines two poems Burl Hill and Newchurch. Throughout I have been aware of the sights and sounds of nature the character of the landscape and the sense of history and timelessness of this beautiful part of the world as reflected in Jo Shapcott’s poetry as well as (I hope) the wit and directness of her expression. The whole work though it has eleven songs still lasts only about 20 minutes the concision of the texts and the need to find musical equivalents to this was an important part of the concept of the piece.        John McCabe 2005

Broken Branches is a short 3 minute song/meditation for soprano piano and double bass. It was written for a concert in New York in 1993 which featured a whole programme of political songs; composers were left free tochoose their own subject matter. The conflict in the former Yugoslavia was then at one of its many furious peaks and Weir made a transcription from a recording of a sad choral song from Croatia called zaspo Janko podjablonem. Work for Soprano Piano and Double Bass.

A Spanish Liederbooklet is a short song cycle(of about eight minutes’ duration) for high soprano and piano written for Eileen Hulse in 1988. Eileen gave the first performance accompanied by Graham Johnson at the 1988 CheltenhamFestival. The texts are all Spanish Romances by anonymous authors from the 15th/16th centuries. The songs are sung in the original Spanish.

POD-Natural History is a work by Judith Weir for Soprano and Orchestra. The work sets four brief texts taken from Chuang Tzu a classical collection of Taoist writings from the 4th 3rd and 2ndcenturies BCE. All four texts are short parables about natural life as lived by different species human and animal. A full performance of this work lasts around 17 minutes. This is the Vocal Score.

fragment from Das Urteil (The Judgement) by Franz Kafka. Par JOST CHRISTIAN. Kafka's œuvre is interspersed with moments of utter anxiety. Moments in which, induced by adrenalin, the blood pressure rises. Blood vessels which seem to constrict, pump enormous quantities of blood the pressure of which might make one believe that the head is going to explode. In The Judgment, an innocent opening story leads to one of the most unusual showdowns in world literature: The beloved father sentences his son to death by drowning; the son immediately obeys since his life, his existence almost explodes, becomes blurred, dissolves at the moment the judgment is pronounced. For me, the 'self' driving him – I imagine this as a high sound in the inner ear – could only be a soprano. This is why the actual 'fall' has turned out to be clear, almost friendly and why Georg only seems to want to breathe a soft and quiet 'Dear parents, I have always loved you' during the fall while no longer keeping the singing tone, shortly before death, almost casually, takes hold of him. Christian Jost/ Répertoire / Soprano et Piano