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- Tarik O'Regan
Solitude Trilogy (2010)
- Novello & Co Ltd (World)
Commissioned by the Vancouver Chamber Choir (Jon Washburn, Conductor) to mark their 40th anniversary in 2011, with major funding from the Arts Partners in Creative Development. First performance 5th November 2010 at the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, Vancouver, Canada, by the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Jon Washburn.
Timings:
Movement 1: 9'
Movement 2: 5'30"
Movement 3: 5'30"
- hp/str
- SATB
- 20 min
- 1. WB Yeats 2. Edward Thomas 3. WB Yeats
- English
Programme Note
Solitude Trilogy takes for its title that of a series of three radio documentaries made by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation between 1967 and 1977 (The Idea of North, The Latecomers & The Quiet in the Land). One might describe each of these documentaries as "contrapuntal radio", for the recordings of the interviewees are edited by Gould to overlap and run simultaneously for long periods of time.
My work, which sets three poems (two by William Butler Yeats and one by Edward Thomas) in three movements, echoes Gould's fascination with the ambiguity of withdrawal. In each text, however, it is a bird which stands for the character of isolation. The strings, harp, solo singers and chorus provide a gently contrapuntal commentary on Gould's vision throughout the piece.
Tarik O'Regan
Text
I. The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;
Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
II. In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: "Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!"
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
III. O, curlew, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the waters in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
Passion dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
My work, which sets three poems (two by William Butler Yeats and one by Edward Thomas) in three movements, echoes Gould's fascination with the ambiguity of withdrawal. In each text, however, it is a bird which stands for the character of isolation. The strings, harp, solo singers and chorus provide a gently contrapuntal commentary on Gould's vision throughout the piece.
Tarik O'Regan
Text
I. The brawling of a sparrow in the eaves,
The brilliant moon and all the milky sky,
And all that famous harmony of leaves,
Had blotted out man's image and his cry.
A girl arose that had red mournful lips
And seemed the greatness of the world in tears,
Doomed like Odysseus and the labouring ships
And proud as Priam murdered with his peers;
Arose, and on the instant clamorous eaves,
A climbing moon upon an empty sky,
And all that lamentation of the leaves,
Could but compose man's image and his cry.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
II. In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: "Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast!"
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.
Edward Thomas (1878-1917)
III. O, curlew, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the waters in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
Passion dimmed eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)