Choir Piece “How Many Afternoons”

STEP 1: PRE-COMPOSITION

  1. Why?

    1. I am writing this piece to honour my father who passed away in 2019. My dad was besides a principal at a music school, and an organist, a choir man. He formed and lead several choirs during his lifetime, taking them abroad across Europe and to the former East Block during the 80s. He won several prices with them and was a demanding choir leader. When in 2022 I was doing a transformational program in London, I kind of reconciled with my father and had a strong feeling of doing something with a choir. I did do a documentary series with a choir but now I feel to make a concert work as well.

    2. I want to explore more the overall “Why” of why I make music, I feel that this has to do with being human, being alive in the universe, being in relationships with other human beings.

  2. How? 

    1. The piece will have slow moving harmonic progression.

    2. I want to use a text fragment from the book “The Sheltering Sky” by Paul Bowles. Because this text asks us some very reflective questions about life and about the time we think we still have. I will have to investigate if I need to ask permission to use this text.

    3. The lyrics might be sung notes or spoken word fragments.

    4. I might work with pre-recorded material. 

    5. I want to explore using Arvo Pärt’s Tintinnabulates method which is almost a go to for choir music.

  3. Instrumentation? 

    1. I have worked with an 8 piece choir of university chorist, this gave a very good results so I will reach out to them again.

    2. We need a space, like the Sint-Baptist church I used before, because the acoustic is part of the instrumentation.

  4. Duration?

    1. I would aim for 8 minutes to start.

  1. Are there any scores we can use as examples?

    This David Lang piece is a nice execution of how to work with text.

Eric Whitacre has a nice colour of blending voices and working with text.

The most important reference has a link with my father. This piece “Lente ben je daar, Spring are you there” was in our family for many years, it’s a piece the me and my sister think of with a great pride of familial achievement. My dad’s youth choir won a first price suma cum laude on the International Choir Festival in Neerpelt in 1984. I was 14 then but I still can identify my 3 sisters in the recording.

This is the recording of that performance.

I’ve gotten the score from the estate holders of Herman Roelstraete.

FORM ?

I’m thinking of A B A C A