The choir were sounding great this Sunday 2nd! I felt they were really capturing the spirit of the piece and doing a great job of  negotiating the changes of tempo and mood within the piece. The programme notes for this Sundays performance along with the poem are below and I am greatly looking forward to hearing the choir in full voice in what will should be a very entertaining evening of music from Bernstein and Elgar amongst others. Now I have to think about my pre concert talk which should give the audience an insight into the process of this way of composing –  I look forward to conveying this very organic way of making a piece which has hopefully engaged the choir from the outset and has certainly made me consider this way of working in the future. Chatting to David after the rehearsal I realized I had travelled 4,200 miles (Birmingham-Glasgow is a 600 mile round trip and after this Sunday 9th I will have made 7 visits)…. and it’s all been very worthwhile!

From A Railway Carriage – Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle;

All of the sights of the hill and the plain,

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And there is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart run away in the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill and there is a river;

Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

From A Railway Carriage for SATB chorus (with divisions) and piano

The piece is a setting of the Scottish poet Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘From A Railway Carriage’. The single movement work describes a series of fleeting moments as witnessed from a railway carriage speeding through the countryside. The whimsical nature of Stevenson’s poem conveys a sense of fun, perhaps a child’s first train journey, taking in views of rolling countryside, village life or stations whistling by. With the lilting rhythmic backdrop of the motion of the train, fast busy music alternates with slower reflective sections evoking scenes that are merely glimpsed then gone forever.

The work was developed for Glasgow Lyric Choir as part of the Adopt-a-Composer scheme, funded by the PRSF and run by Sound and Music in association with Making Music. The collaborative nature of the project meant I worked closely with the choir at all stages of the development.

The text, a real favourite amongst the members of the choir, was agreed upon early on and from there a series of short sketches were created and tried out in workshops. I then developed these initial ideas further taking on board the observations and suggestions of the choir. Over a period of 3 months the work was developed and sent for rehearsal at regular intervals with members of the choir giving their feedback at rehearsals or via the forum on the choir’s website.

Although essentially a children’s poem, the text is full of interesting and dynamic imagery that lends itself well to musical setting. The melodic writing is quite lyrical, my intention being to create a piece of linked song-like sections each describing a scene as the train whistles by. The tempo and meter changes provide rhythmic excitement conveying the changing rhythms of the train speeding through the countryside. I make widespread use of canons and combine these with spoken word rhythms and vocal glissandi (train whistles) to create the texture of the piece. The homophonic sections are intended to offset the whimsical nature of the faster, more song-like material with moments of tranquility and reflection.

The piece is essentially modal in character and the use of the Lydian mode throughout the piece gives the music an airy or dreamy quality. I thought this quality also suited the idea of speed especially those moments when a train crosses over a high bridge when it can almost feel like flying, the distant scenery going past in slow motion; the Golden Age of Steam extending from Stephenson’s Rocket to The Flying Scotsman are brought to mind!