Composer:
Giles Brindley
Title:
Three Sad Songlets, and other songs
Instrumentation:
Mezzo-spoprano, trombone, keyboard, horn, and undilector
Duration:
15 minutes
Difficulty:
Harder
Programme note:
1.Three Sad Songlets. These were written in July 2003 as exercises for Diana Burrell's composition class at the COMA Summer School. The task was to adapt a set of only 48 words to provide texts for a territying piece and two sorowful pieces, and to set these texts for singer and one or two instruments.
2. Lantern Festival, by Ou-Yang Hsiu
Last year at the Lantern Festival
The flower-market lights were bright as day.
When the moon mounted to the tops of the willows,
Two lovers kept their tryst after the yellow dusk.
This year at the Lantern Festival
The moon and the lights are the same as then;
Only, I see not my lover of yesteryear,
And tears drench the sleeves of my yellow gown.
3. Love without hope, by Robert Graves
Love without hope, as when the young birdcatcher
Swept off his tall hat to the squire's own daughter;
So let th'emprisoned larks go free to fly
Singing about her head as she rode by.
4. Camber Sands, by Hilary Brindley
We followed a winding road from a town surrounded by sheep.
A sudden right turn; the road paved with broken concrete, the rutted and sandy.
Houses on the right below us, municipal brick.
On the left, various nondescript detached dwellings fronted by garages with plywood doors.
"Come in!" you said, and I saw through a glass wall an endless gleaming ocean.
The garden ended on the beach, and a driftwood log marked its boundary.
Sometimes the tide laps up to the wall, you explained.
(Sometimes the tide laps up to the wall)!
The tide was going out, and in a lessening lake black knobs appeared in a line.
You told me it was a wreck, occasionally exposed.
Fourteenth century, they think. Coffee?
(Fourteenth century, they think)!
The land lies oddly here, so that the tide goes out both ways at once.
(The tide goes out both ways at once)!
Black-headed gulls wandered along the shore, and a few people, walking dogs.
In the distance a group of dark-clad men gathered, intent on some mystery.
"We often see the bar-tailed godwit" you remarked.
(They often see the bar-tailed godwit)!
As the water silently rises, stone by stone, and laps at the low wall,
Long-drowned seaman drift by in both directions,
While the voiceless bar-tailed godwit floats overhead, mourning.
Availability:
From The composer