water songs
SATB a cappella | 4' | Graphite | Text: Robert Louis Stevenson
Where Go the Boats sets a Robert Louis Stevenson text about a child’s boats sailing down a river. The child asks when they will return, then realizes they never will. "Boats of mine a-boating—Where will all come home? [...] Other little children Shall bring my boats ashore."
SSA or SATB Chorus & Piano | 5' | Graphite | Text: Barbara Crooker
A piece about surfing, longing for another life, and embracing your own abilities. In this lush setting, the piano represents the ocean itself, and the singers’ voices coast along its swirling waves.
SATB & Piano | 6' | G. Schirmer Dale Warland Choral Series | Text: Anne Brontë
In choosing this text to set, I was struck by the first sentence, which begins “No language can describe [...] the sky and ocean” and then proceeds to do just that. The ocean is represented alternately in the ebbing and flowing of the aleatoric piano accompaniment and in overlapping melodic lines in the chorus.
SATB a cappella with divisi | 4' | Graphite | Text by Laura Foley
Relinquishment sets poet Laura Foley's meditation on accepting loss.
She writes, "I am looking at pale blue ponds of melted ice / on a frozen river
/ and in them perfect clouds passing. / Wind sends ripples along the water
/ and trees cut sharp lines into the sky... And I will be learning, again,
how to give it all up by simply turning."
