Work
Ports of Call
for a cappella SATB choir
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About
This short cycle of pieces was written for a concert by the Auckland choir Viva Voce conducted by John Rosser on the subject of holidays. Having had some difficulty finding texts on that specific subject, I looked to poetry about travel in general. The chosen texts are all by poets active in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and present varied views of the fashion of travelling, the reasons for a sea voyage, the plight of being in Rotterdam while your loved one is in England, and the place of the 'foreigner' in pre-twentieth century Japan. Musically, the work adopts a somewhat 'antiquated' style to match the tenor of the poems. The cycle ends with a reprise of the opening music.
Commissioned note
Written for a concert by the Auckland choir Viva Voce
Contents note
1: The Delinquent Travellers
2: The Holiday
3: To****
4: When I First Came to Live in Japan
Text note
Texts by Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Thomas Frank Bignold; Thomas Hood; and Osman Edwards