Browsing by Subject "Song cycle"
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Item Outfacing the storm : songs from the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition(2012-08) Wayman, Abraham Mark; Pennycook, Bruce, 1949-Outfacing the Storm is a song cycle that tells the story of the spectacular failure-turned-triumph of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. Led by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the Expedition was an attempt to trek overland across the whole of the Antarctic continent. Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, launched from England in August of 1914 with twenty-eight men. Within weeks of entering the polar latitudes, ice ensnared the ship. The Endurance remained stuck fast until the spring breakup crushed its hull, and it sank in November of 1915. The crew struck out for civilization, and, after six months and over one thousand miles of travel by foot, by ice-drift, and by lifeboat, they returned home alive. The Expedition’s safe return was heavily credited by its crew to Shackleton himself. A man of intense character, burning passion, and unfailing determination, Shackleton put the needs of his crew ahead of all else. His individual dedication to each member of the voyage was an inspiration to each. Ernest Shackleton, however, was a private man. He hid his own concerns from all except those closest to him. During the Expedition, he feared for the well-being of the crew. In the largest sense, he feared failure. Shackleton was only ever content while at sea. “Sometimes,” he wrote to his wife, “I think I am no good at anything but being away in the wilds… I grow restless and feel any part of youth is slipping away from me and that nothing matters… I feel I am no use to anyone unless I am outfacing the storm in wild lands.” This song cycle tells the tale of the Expedition through Shackleton’s eyes. The cycle is in eleven movements—nine recounting the story, plus a prologue and epilogue. All of the text is Shackleton’s own. The nine middle movements are taken from Shackleton’s memoir about the voyage, South. The prologue and epilogue are taken, respectively, from an interview and the above letter.Item Righteous Among the Nations : the story of Ho Feng-Shan(2017-06-22) Yee, Thomas B.; Grantham, Donald, 1947-Righteous Among the Nations : the story of Ho Feng-Shan is a four-movement music composition of approximately 25 minutes in duration. The piece is scored for Baritone solo voice and Pierrot Ensemble (Flute/Piccolo, Clarinet in B-flat/Bass Clarinet, Violin, Cello, Percussion, and Piano. Music and libretto is the creation/arrangement of the composer. The following is the Program note written to accompany the score to "Righteous Among the Nations", functioning as an introduction to the composition: "In the year 2000, Israel's Holocaust remembrance center Yad Vashem posthumously awarded Ho Feng-Shan the title "Righteous Among the Nations," the nation's highest civil honor, for saving the lives of more European Jews than any other single individual during the early years of the Holocaust. As China's Consul General to Vienna from 1938 1940, he issued exit visas to any Jewish person requesting them, allowing them to leave Austria legally and reach safety elsewhere in the world via Shanghai and other Chinese ports. Hundreds queued up outside his consulate doors from morning to night seeking aid; Dr. Ho issued over 4,000 such visas, by conservative estimates, despite orders from his superiors to desist. On one occasion, an armed SS officer held him at gunpoint while he interposed his own body to protect a Jewish family. Ho Feng-Shan never breathed a word of his heroic actions to his wife, children, or friends—they were discovered by his family and Yad Vashem years after his 1997 death. Ho Feng-Shan, like most Holocaust rescuers, started off as a bystander, attempting to maintain a life of normalcy after Germany's sudden annexation of Austria (Anschluss). However, when confronted with the jagged reality of the unfolding Holocaust—the beginnings of the extermination of Jews on Kristallnacht—he could no longer collude with genocide by refusing to act, becoming complicit every time he averted his eyes from need. In post-war years, after being reassigned to Brooklyn in New York City, Dr. Ho became fascinated with racial prejudice, seared so forcefully into memory by his years in Nazi-occupied Austria. He identified prejudice as the most important social condition in American society, observing and experiencing it in hiring, rent, voting, and education practices as well as tracing its roots through American history—especially slavery and immigration history. I have come to admire Ho Feng-Shan deeply—for his awareness and compassion, humanitarian courage, and unwavering conviction during perhaps the twentieth century's most horrific time and place. As Dr. Ho himself writes (in a poem quoted in Movement IV), "The convictions of heroes [are] not lightly formed". Though the above history may seem flattened into the distant past, Ho Feng-Shan's character and actions stand robust, real, and three-dimensional, coming alive now for you in music. May we never forget, but remember—and by remembering, learn."Item Vision and prayer for flute, clarinet, percussion, piano, violin, cello, soprano and bass baritone(2017-06-16) Prosser, Christopher S., 1978-; Sharlat, Yevgeniy, 1977-; Pinkston, Russell; Grantham, Donald; Pennycook, Bruce; Heinzelman, KurtVision and Prayer is a forty-minute song cycle for small chamber ensemble, soprano, and bass-baritone. The work is a setting of Dylan Thomas’s poem of the same name, and encompasses seven songs. It is conceived in two parts: “The Vision,” comprised of four songs beginning with an instrumental Prelude, and “The Prayer,” comprised of three songs beginning with an instrumental Interlude. The cycle is a programmatic work whose meaning and message stems from my own interpretation of the poem. This interpretation coincides with my idiosyncratic beliefs and faith in Jesus Christ found in the New Testament gospels of the Bible. Three themes are found running throughout the poem. They are an awakening of faith, fleeing from this newly found faith, and an utter acceptance and submission to Jesus Christ. The music attempts to convey these three themes by way of gesture, motive and text painting. My ultimate goal in writing Vision and Prayer is to use this work as a vehicle to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with others.