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IAN 3/20/25, Music as Healing Chorus: A Cappella Songs of Spring [1]
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Date: 2025-03-19
The heavens are ever blue and the Earth
shall stand sure, and blossom in the spring.
But you O man, what long life have you?
Not a hundred years may delight bring
You all the transient treasures of this earth.
- Gustav Mahler, Song of the Earth (see Earthsongs diary).
Here is a gorgeous collection of songs for spring, for a cappella chorus, by highly talented composers of today.
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This first stunning number is by Nicholas Ryan Kelly originally of Ithaca, NY, now composing in Canada. (Right behind you, Mr. Kelly.) In the composer’s own words:
"You Speak Violets" (SATB a cappella chorus with divisii) — “is about a child who is quiet, but clearly has a lot going on inside. I used the music to explore and bring out this child's vibrant inner world: the deep wells of imagination and emotion that lie beneath a shy, placid surface. I was once such a child myself (and am now, in many ways, a quiet adult). How freeing and validating it would have been to have heard this piece's sentiments back then! For those of us without a knack for words, music and the arts can be a powerful way to communicate our experiences--and I hope this piece gives voice to the forests, waterfalls, and (yes) violets blooming, unspoken, in many an introverted mind." The text for this piece comes from Shannon Brammer’s wonderful book Climbing Shadows: Poems for Children (Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2019; used with permission.) — Nicholas Ryan Kelly, You Speak Violets (poem by Shannon Brammer):
Sometimes, you are quiet as a trillium,
Yet your eyes speak
The language of wild basil
And red butterflies -
Butterflies impatient
For a buzzing loud summer.
You've got a young
Forest inside you;
I see waterfalls
Beyond tall white sleeping trees,
Birches, poplars,
Where everything is moving
And alive;
I see rushing waters
In your eyes
When you get a new idea,
Sun through the branches
Making shadows inside you.
When you find it hard to say
What you are feeling,
You speak violets.
Breathing Light: By the New Age band “2002”, named for the infinity sign in the middle and the founder couple. Now a mother, father and daughter team, Pamela, Randy and Sarah Copus provide all voices, instruments, and synthesizer samples. This piece is not a cappella but has choral synth parts sampled from their voices, and is a beautiful example of ambient music, “klangfarbenmelodie” where the notes and chords unfold very gradually, but with good part-writing so there is a definite series of lovely, deeply felt harmonic progressions:
Riley Ferretti is a brilliant young composer from Tennessee, with a Master's in Composition from Florida State, and is currently a Doctoral Assistant at Ohio State. Her modern classical pieces are elaborate 8-part choral counterpoint, densely layered like Tallis but of the most subtle beauty in each carefully articulated part. The amount of cross-checking with 8 independent parts to ensure all the counterpoint works is mind-blowing; you have to test every combination. And then after functionality, to ensure that sheer musical beauty shines from every section on its own, then together with the other sections. Only gifted composers can do this with any success.
Invitation to Love is her setting of a beautiful poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar. It unfolds with kaleidoscopic complexity, like a stained-glass window at Chartres; immerse yourself in the shimmering tone colors of the different voices. Best heard on good computer speakers or headphones (click ‘Watch on YouTube’ to see the words better):
Here is her setting of The Oak with eponymous poem by Tennyson. Again an extraordinary, complexly layered work by this young lady of genius. In sheer beauty it rivals anything in the Renaissance. Eight parts, and the fugal statements and responses after the introduction show the highest level of training, talent and art. Headphones or tower required to hear all the overtones clearly:
The Oak
Live thy life,
Young and old,
Like yon oak,
Bright in spring,
Living gold;
Summer-rich
Then; and then
Autumn-changed
Sober-hued
Gold again.
All his leaves
Fall'n at length,
Look, he stands,
Trunk and bough
Naked strength.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Ryan Kelly, Dreaming Upside Down: This is also based on a lovely children's poem by Shannon Brammer, about bats. The tone colors evoked by Kelly's choral techniques are amazing. You are flying right there with them, smelling the stones and the water and the purple sky of dusk:
Ryan Kelly, Edge of Dawn: "Based on a poem by Lola Ridge, this piece is about how looking beyond ourselves (to the natural world) can bring us back from emotionally dark places". It ends on abrupt rising 5ths, inviting the listener to continue the impulse of renewal:
Ryan Kelly, The Stars Keep Watch: Written for a poem by E. Pauline Tekahionwake, a profound meditation on the sacredness of the land and our place in it - our oneness with the trees, the earth, the sky, the ancient songs of life:
The world of nature speaks to us with the sounds of the elements and the colors of the earth. It is immanent in all of us, the irresistible force of life itself. Some call it beauty. Some call it strength. Some might even call it hope.
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