Voice & String Quartet
SKU: ST.Y296
Composed by Rhian Samuel.
Chamber music. For High
Voice, String Quartet and
Piano. Score (2 copies
supplied) and parts.
Score and parts. Stainer
& Bell Ltd. #Y296.
Published by Stainer &
Bell Ltd. (ST.Y296).
ISBN
9790220223525.
Natu
re and landscape have
been the dominant themes
of much of Rhian Samuel's
vocal music of the last
ten years, projected
chiefly through the
poetry of Anne Stevenson,
and in her most recent
song-settings, the
writings of the
Pakistan-born Texas-based
poet Zulfikar Ghose. His
poem 'Conspiracy of the
Clouds' describes how,
the clouds having chosen
to become invisible,
'Even the astronauts on
the space shuttle /
looked down on a
cloudless America' as
hurricanes ravage
Louisiana and storms
engulf Nebraska. An
intriguing conceit in the
tradition of magic
realism, the text is
presented as a scena
lasting around 16
minutes, with
interpolations from
'Haze' by the
nineteenth-century New
England transcendentalist
Henry David Thoreau. Thus
modern fable and romantic
nature-description are
juxtaposed, and their
interaction becomes the
source of musical
contrasts too. Thoreau's
words are assigned
predominantly to the
vocalist's highest
register, those of Ghose
to her lower tessitura;
and the suggestive and
dramatic accompaniment
builds tension steadily
to the final ironic
response of an
incredulous American
public: not one of awe
and wonder, but the
question 'Why weren't we
told about it?
A Song For New England
