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Digital download
- Ben Parry
Flame
- Peters Edition Limited (World)
- SSSAAATTTBBB
- SSSAAATTTBBB
- 5 min
- Garth Bardsley
Programme Note
'Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared’. This quote, attributed to Gautama Buddha, was the inspiration for my poem, Flame. Ben and I were in the process of writing a series of Christmas carols and I had in my mind, an image of candles being lit and what such an action may represent. My first attempt was a truly lamentable set of verses entitled The Candle Lit At Christmas which both Ben and I both agreed was best forgotten. Looking for a guide I found this quote and suddenly the poem was there before me and within a few hours this song had been born. I think this is the speediest creation that Ben and I have ever achieved and it is also one of our absolute favourites. Flame has since become immensely popular and has been sung around the world - we hope it continues to spread its message of joy and enlightenment.
A flame
Dispels the dark
Its delicate light repels the shadows
A flame alone
Brings within its flicker
A welcoming warmth
A single flame
That shares its light
Is but strengthened by this splitting in two
And as each flame
Begets another
Its life and light is multiplied
To become unending
Forever burning
A beacon that both beckons and guides
So to light the world
© Garth Bardsley
Media
Reviews
"Ben Parry's 'Flame' saw the choir dispersed round sides of auditorium as well as on stage, to mesmerising effect."
"The second half was devoted to the New Zealand Youth Choir, the most experienced of the four choirs, starting with Ben Parry’s Flame, with men and women separated, right and left. It clearly had a religious significance, suggesting at first a flickering flame, slowly, increasing in intensity and complexity…. So, a very appropriate figure to open the NZYC’s contribution at this concert. Conducted by David Squire, its performance challenges were most sensitively handled."
"The concert concluded with two short vocal works by Tchaikovsky and a recent work called The Flame by Ben Parry (whom Bell wryly noted is a rival choirmaster of his, back in the UK). Like Betinis’ piece, all three of these works offered ample opportunities for text-painting, which Bell and the chorus seized with taste and sensitivity."
"The same forces joined together for a moving performance of Ben Parry’s The Flame in which the closely interweaving voices represented the flickering flame, gradually increasing in intensity as its light and hope spread to others. Certainly Voces 8 and the other performers sent the audience away exhilarated by what they had heard and seen."
"The triumphant sound proved to be the ideal curtain-raiser to the afternoon's very British BBC Prom. Ben Parry's Flame, receiving its first Proms performance, is prefaced with the words:
'Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.' What better description could there be of the Olympic Torch Relay? Sung by the BBC Singers and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the ethereal music swelled in a straight line from a whisper-quiet beginning to a mighty climax. Most effective."
"[George Hall] was more impressed by the shorter opening work, by Ben Parry, called Flame. Someone calling herself "Tom Daley" meanwhile tuned into Twitter to voice her support for Parry."
“But the richest sounds came in the four-minute curtain-raiser, Ben Parry’s Flame, a gorgeously handled crescendo of warmth and bliss."
"More striking was the short opener, Ben Parry's Flame, to words by Garth Bardsley, which employed imaginative techniques to build its small structure to a wonderfully resonant final chord."
"The three adult choirs could easily have repeated Flame at the end of the concert, so impressive was it in its Buddhist ideal of a single candle becoming more powerful in spreading light by the number of people that see it, as encapsulated in Garth Bardsley’s short stanzas. From low Pärtian sonorities to start, Parry’s setting rises slowly in pitch in 12-part harmony ending with wave upon wave of reiteration of the final line “so to light the world”, bathing the Royal Albert Hall in a sonic glow."