Five short choral works for eight amplified voices

for National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellowship 2019-20.

  • National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellowship at The Elgar Room, Royal Albert Hall, London (UK); Date TBC

    [Postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic]

  • Over recent years I have increasingly become obsessed with the ‘everyday’. Perhaps the onslaught of technology and having to continually exaggerate our ‘mundane’ lives on social media have meant that we can no longer turn our heads away from the wider world (and arguably, neither should we). It is all there.

    This has become even more important in recent times, as we find ourselves digitising our entire lives; from the work we do, to the socialising we need, to quite literally the only way many can communicate with one another – in this ‘chaos’ of the virtual. However, I am beginning to discover, as many are, that this is also an important time for reflection. Perhaps this is an essential moment of our lives for repose, as we (quite literally) live with our own thoughts and dealing with not only the mundane but even the existential. A reflection on the past and the future and where we fit in within both, whilst being immortalised digitally.

    In collaboration with the singers of the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain Fellowship, Morals + Interludes is a series of choral reflections on our relationship with our digital selves. Using ‘virtual memories’ from our own lives, from old home movies to snapshots from our social media personas and personal blogs, we have created five short postcards inspired by these lived experiences with the aim of finding either joy or unexpected profundity behind these snapshots. From the mundane to the moving, we held a mirror up to ourselves, discovering the moral behind each of our stories and the interludes that permeate our eveyerday.

    This work was completed whilst on residence at The Red House (Aldeburgh, UK), as supported by Britten Pears Arts. The title of the work was inspired by Alfred W. Pollard's ‘English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interlude’s, a collection of surviving Chester mystery plays, from which one inspired Benjamin Britten's ‘Noye's Fludde’.

    -njd.

  • eight voices or varying divisions of an SATB choir

  • 10’

  • Kindly supported by NMC Recordings (Programme Digital Partners), Steinberg Media Technologies (Technology Partner), Stainer & Bell (Publishing Partner), The Garrick Charitable Trust, RVW Trust, The Michael Tippett Musical Foundation, Lord and Lady Lurgan Trust and PRS Foundation's Open Fund for Organisations.

  • 'Morals + Interludes' was shortlisted by Ty Cerdd to represent Wales at the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) World Music Days 2021 in Shangai & Nanning. (May 2021)

    'Morals + Interludes' receives 3rd Prize at New Music Generation 2021 International Composer Competition (October 2021)

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score available to purchase

Digital and printed scores for Morals + Interludes are published by Stainer & Bell Ltd., and be purchased though their website.

text

i. How are you?
after Ella Rainbird-Earley



How are you?

How are you feeling?

“It was the worst thing in my life,"

The light is flashing.

My nose is so cold.

How are you?


ii. norm
after Milette Riis


They should get a real job;
They should work harder.
What do they even do all day?
Can’t they grow up?

we can’t see ourselves.


iii. This was mine
after Ella Rainbird-Earley
a reflection on R. S. Thomas’ Reservoirs


This was mine,
This was my house.

Where can we go?
We have walked the shore.
Where can we go?

This was our house,
Gardens gone,
Our home,
Where can we go?


iv. stay away from clocks
after Milette Riis


Try to stay away from clocks, or other time measuring devices (like egg timers).


v. without
after Aristotle
for Laurence Padfield


without them,
without him,
without her,
without love.

without affection,
without warmth,
without a connection,
without holding your hand.

without them,
without him,
without her,
without love.

without society,
without law,
without family,
without you.

we are as solitary as the birds.