Four Songs

for SATB a cappella choir
(2011)

Recordings of two of the Four Songs can be heard at these links:
Song #1: To Be Your Song
Song #4: Mist and Musing Eyes

These four songs are settings of poems that I have written over the span of many years. The earliest poem dates from the late 1990s, while the newest was written in 2011. I chose to group them together as a set because they represent various ways people experience their lives — sometimes through quiet contemplation, sometimes through tragedy or painful realizations, sometimes through love, sometimes through loss. Although none of these “experiences” is directly discussed in any of the poems, I feel their imagery may help inspire such thoughts within audience members.

Musically, the songs range from being quite simple and pleasing to being unstable, uncomfortable and difficult. To me, this range only begins to express the complexity of emotions and situations we all face during the (hopefully) long span of our lives. The first song, To be Your Song, is a sort of introduction to this idea as it tries to capture some of this wide range of possibilities. The second song, The Strength of What is Broken, deals mostly with sadness and anger while the driving force of The Boatman is fear. Finally, Mist and Musing Eyes is an expression of caring, acceptance and peace.

(Total performance duration of all four songs is ca. 16 minutes.)