2016

Missa Brevis: 1. Kyrie eleison

Posted by sara-garrard

I first started this Kyrie a year and a half ago and did a lil draft of me singing it into the computer šŸ˜€ Ā I donā€™t think at that time I was even thinking of it being a Real Thing sung by a Real Choir; it was a slightly spur of the moment thing experimenting with simplicity, drones, FIFTHS and Lydian mode ā€” very very loosely inspired by a tiny of Icelandic music Iā€™d heard (the Lydian and the fifths!) Ā But I did write the rest of the mass setting and then to my delight our conductor asked ā€œso do you have anything else for us to sing?ā€ and we rehearsed it this term. Ā I am so so pleased with how it eventually turned out, especially in the acoustic of the church where we performed. Ā Everything I could have hoped for. Ā (Iā€™m on here! Ā Singing the drone :D)

This is just very very meditative ā€” the same thing cycles around with slight variation a total of seven times ā€” I think the influence of PƤrt and holy minimalism is even clearer in another movement but thatā€™s the sort of mood here for sure. Ā I love being part of this group, I love writing for womenā€™s voices and I love absorbing influences from our mostly medieval repertoire.

Kyrie eleison (ĪšĻĻĪ¹Īµ į¼Ī»Ī­Ī·ĻƒĪæĪ½)
Lord, have mercy
Christe eleison (Ī§ĻĪ¹ĻƒĻ„Ī­ į¼Ī»Ī­Ī·ĻƒĪæĪ½)
Christ, have mercy

Posted by sara-garrard

I havenā€™t really decided how often / how many piano pieces I will put up on bandcamp – I’d like to have sheet music to go with them, but you can only do that as an extra with an album….

so sometime I may make an album or three of piano music …

anyway šŸ™‚ Ā This is a standalone. Ā This is that strange meditative piece from last year – now recorded on an actual piano <3 Ā And now with sheet music available, as I say!

Aphorisms: a heart beneath a stone

Posted by sara-garrard

I encountered in the street a poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes. Water trickled through his boots, and the stars through his soul.
*
Oh joy of the birds! It because they have nests that they sing.
*
Love is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.
*
On the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love.
*
True love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its desires and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely small. Nothing suffices for love: we have happiness, we desire paradise: we possess paradise, we desire heaven.
*
ā€œDoes she still come to the gardens?
ā€œNo. She has moved away.ā€
ā€œWhere has she gone to dwell?ā€
ā€œShe did not say.ā€
*
What a melancholy thing not to know the address of oneā€™s soul.
*
If you are a stone, be adamant. If you are a plant, be the tender plant. If you are man, be love.
*
What love commences can be finished by God alone.
*
Love participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. It is a point of fire: immortal, infiniteā€” which nothing can contain, which nothing can extinguish.

words from Les MisƩrables.

recording of my piece ā€˜Aphorismsā€™ from last year – not a wonderful quality recording, but listenable!  for 2-part womenā€™s choir.

Madonna of the evening flowers

Posted by sara-garrard

All day long I have been working,
Now I am tired
I call: ā€œWhere are you?ā€
But there is only the oak-tree rustling in the wind.
The house is very quiet,
The sun shines in on your books,
On your scissors and thimble just put down,
But you are not there.
Suddenly I am lonely:
Where are you? I go about searching.

Then I see you,
Standing under a spire of pale blue larkspur,
With a basket of roses on your arm.
You are cool, like silver,
And you smile.
I think the Canterbury bells are playing little tunes.

You tell me that the peonies need spraying,
That the columbines have overrun all bounds,
That the pyrus japonica should be cut back and rounded.
You tell me all these things.
But I look at you, heart of silver,
White heart-flame of polished silver,
Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur,
And I long to kneel instantly at your feet,
While all about us peal the loud, sweet, Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.

Madonna of the Evening Flowers (Amy Lowell)

~draft~

I’m not really a soprano! but I love this poem, and Amy Lowell.