Chorus America Consortium Commission

I just put copies of SPIRITUAL MUSICK in the mail last week to thirteen children’s choirs from the U.S., Canada and Scotland who “purchased” me last year at the Chorus America silent auction.  Auction organizer and friend Paul Caldwell didn’t have to persuade me to donate this in support of Chorus America’s work.  The piece is a quirky setting of Christopher Smart’s unusual text from Jubilate Agno, a long free-verse manuscript written between 1759 and 1763, during Smart's confinement for insanity in St. Luke's Hospital, Bethnal Green, London.  Benjamin Britten memorably used Smart’s text in his Rejoice in the Lamb, for SATB chorus and organ.  This version is set for treble voices with piano and a little band of snare drum, bass drum and triangle.  It’s a rhythmic, angular, declamatory recitation of the instrument rhimes (“For there is the thunder-stop, which is the voice of God direct. For the rest of the stops are by their rhimes.”)  SPIRITUAL MUSICK will premiere – thirteen times! – next season.  See the listing under WORKS:  Music for Treble Choirs for the names of the choirs and their directors.  I can’t wait to hear it!