AN END

AN END

Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head;
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.
He was born in the Spring,
And died before the harvesting:
On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn twilight cold and grey.
Sit we by his grave, and sing
He is gone away.

To few chords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass,
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.

- Christina Rossetti

Recorded on:

Parlez-moi
Concerto Della Donna
Iwan Edwards, conductor

listen

ECHO

ECHO

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
Oh dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.

Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!

- Christina Rossetti

Listen to:
Allan Bevan's

Echo

from
THE MANITOU SINGERS OF
ST. OLAF COLLEGE VOL. 7

The Manitou Singers
Sigrid Johnson, Conductor

FULL FATHOM FIVE

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Hark! Now I hear them, - Ding-dong, bell.

excerpt from: William Shakespeare's The Tempest

MIRAGE

NOU GOTH SONNE UNDER WODE

Premiered in 2005 by Pro Coro Canada and the Pro Coro Chamber Orchestra, Timothy Anderson, narrator; Jolaine Kerley, soprano;
Richard Sparks, conductor.
Winspear Centre in Edmonton, Alberta

Pro Coro's 2007 performance was broadcast on CBC Radio 2, Choral Concert
Sunday, February 17, 2008.

Premiere Review:

"It was Mozart's Requiem that drew 1,700 people to Pro Coro's Good Friday concert, but it was the world premier of Bevan's Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode that propelled them to their feet at its conclusion, and for good reason.
...The choir, soloist Jolaine Kerley, narrator Timothy Anderson and a select group of Edmonton Symphony players delivered what sounded like it could be a definitive performance of this contemporary work...Anderson did a theatrically accomplished job of conveying the persona of Christ in His excruciating last hours and as raconteur of the gospel story about Jesus' physical and psychological torment on the cross...[The] Kyrie is technically masterful and moving...almost pastoral, as though the deity addressed were the great consoler...Bevan's orchestration is full of fine detail right down to some imaginative timpani parts..."

-Bill Rankin,
The Edmonton Journal,
March 27th, 2005.

********

The Composer's Guild's described Nou Goth Sonne Under Wode as, "A marvelous work...impressed by the intellectual and emotional breadth, [and] beautiful counterpoint." The "instrumental parts are haunting, the key relationships striking. What a piece!"

********

" The audience’s overwhelmingly enthusiastic response to Pro Coro Canada’s world-premiere performance of Allan Bevan’s ingenious composition certifies this work as a modern-day classic. You will not want to miss this performance!"

--Pro Coro Canada.

PEACE

The final number of Three Motets on Texts of Henry Vaughan, Peace was composed in 2001 and first sung and recorded on, My Soul There is a Country by the University of Alberta Madrigal Singers, Leonard Ratzlaff, conductor. Under assistant conductor, Ardelle Ries, Peace was part of the 2002 tour repertoire of the Madrigal Singers and was one of the choir’s submissions to the CBC Competition for Amateur Choirs.
This work was released by classica Music Publishers in the fall of 2004.

Peace was chosen from among 45 submissions by Canadian composers as the winning work in the 2002 Ruth Watson Henderson Choral Composition Competition, sponsored by Choirs Ontario.Recently, the "Mads" performed Peace at the ACDA convention in Los Angeles in February 2005.

 

SINGERS TO COME

Recorded on:

Singers to Come

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
To song? What words of yours be sent
Through man’s soul, and with earth be blent?
These worlds of nature and the heart
Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
And crown these towers in circling flight,
And cross these seas like summer birds,
And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
Some mystic part of you belongs
To us whose dreams your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flowers,
Which will mean so much in your songs.

-Alice Meynell (1847-1922)
A Poet’s Fancies IX

THE ECLIPSE

Recorded on:

My Soul, There is a Country...

University of Alberta Madrigal Singers
Leonard Ratzlaff, conductor
listen to the University of Alberta
Madrigal Singers

Recorded on:

Songs of the Soul

I Coristi Chamber Choir,
Debra Cairns, conductor

Three Motets on Texts of Henry Vaughan
i. The Eclipse
ii. The Revival
iii. Peace

THE REVIVAL

Recorded on:

My Soul, There is a Country...

University of Alberta Madrigal Singers
Leonard Ratzlaff, conductor
listen to the University of Alberta Madrigal Singers

Recorded on:

Songs of the Soul

I Coristi Chamber Choir,
Debra Cairns, conductor

Three Motets on Texts of Henry Vaughan
i. The Eclipse
ii. The Revival
iii. Peace

THE TIME DRAWS NEAR THE BIRTH OF CHRIST

Text from Tennyson's
In Memoriam

The time draws near the birth of Christ:
   The moon is hid; the night is still;
     The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.

Four voices of four hamlets round,
     From far and near, on mead and moor,
     Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:

Each voice four changes on the wind,
     That now dilate, and now decrease,
     Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace,
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.

This year I slept and woke with pain,
     I almost wish'd no more to wake,
     And that my hold on life would break
Before I heard those bells again:

But they my troubled spirit rule,
     For they controll'd me when a boy;
     They bring me sorrow touch'd with joy,
The merry merry bells of Yule.

THERE, IN THAT OTHER WORLD

Recorded on:

This commission from Ariose Women's Choir of Edmonton, Dr. Marilyn Kerley, conductor, was premiered on April 17, 2005.
In November 2005, the choir released a recording of the work. It sets a haunting poem by Mary Coleridge.

THREE MOTETS ON TEXTS OF
HENRY VAUGHAN

TOI, MOI, TOUT UN MONDE (arr.)