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love is love

PROGRAMME

Abbie Betinis Love is Love is Love is Love

Whatsapp message: Something Exciting

Derri Joseph Lewis Something Exciting 

Gerald Finzi My Spirit Sang All Day

Carol Ann Duffy: Havisham

Carlo Gesualdo Moro, lasso, al mio duolo

Morten Lauridsen Six 'Firesongs' on Italian Renaissance Poems No.1

William Shakespeare: Fie on Sinful Fantasy

Claudio Monteverdi Sì ch'io vorrei morire

Mari Esabel Valverde Before Spring

Catullus 85: I hate and I love

Morten Lauridsen Six 'Firesongs' on Italian Renaissance Poems No.6

Mechthild of Magdeburg: How God Answers the Soul

William Walton Set Me As A Seal Upon Thine Heart 

Kristina Arakelyan My Love Is Come To Me

William Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet - Excerpt from Act 2,  Scene vi

Peretti, Creatore, Weiss arr. Alan Billingsley Can't Help Falling in Love

James MacMillan Lassie, Wad Ye Loe Me?

Emily Dickinson: Wild Nights

John Farmer Fair Phyllis

Trad. (Improvisation) Greensleeves

Thomas Morley Now Is The Month of Maying

Michael Field: Stream & Pool

Alex Groves Stream & Pool

Ludwig Jacobowski: Leuchtende Tage (Radiant Days)

Percy Grainger Mo Nighean Dubh

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Love’s Philosophy

Mari Esabel Valverde Best Wishes

Programme Notes

Abbie Betinis Love is Love is Love is Love

This song was written for the Justice Choir Songbook. It is dedicated to the victims, and survivors, of hate crimes everywhere, and specifically for those at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando on June 12, 2016. Love is often the bravest thing we do. May love prevail. – Abbie

Whatsapp message: Something Exciting

Derri Joseph Lewis Something Exciting

Derri Joseph Lewis is a composer whose work engages with contemporary subjects, notably issues of LGBTQIA+ identity. Dedicated to the National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, Something Exciting is a vivid autobiographical testimony to the complex experience of coming out to parents. Derri’s own words from an actual WhatsApp text to his father are set to uplifting music conveying the unique sense of affirmation and anxiety of that moment. Slow-moving iterations of the message are announced against ecstatic foreground ostinati, suggesting both the personal memory of time passing slowly and quickly simultaneously, and a universal theme, that coming out is not just a single occasion, but rather ‘a never-ending series of small – yet significant – conversations’. 

Gerald Finzi My Spirit Sang All Day

Finzi was born in London on July 14, 1901, and spent his early childhood in London. His father died when he was just seven and following the outbreak of the First World War, Finzi moved with his mother to Harrogate, in Yorkshire. There, Finzi studied composition with the composer Ernest Farrar and from 1917 with Edward Bairstow at York Minster. This part-song is from a set of seven part-song settings of poetry by Robert Bridges. It depicts elated emotions as the speaker realises their love is their ‘joy’. As it happens, Finzi’s wife was called Joy!

Carol Ann Duffy: Havisham

Carlo Gesualdo Moro, lasso, al mio duolo

Gesualdo was an Italian composer known for his use of avant-garde chromaticism in choral music. He is also known for killing his first wife and her lover upon finding them together mid-passion. This madrigal is taken from his sixth book of madrigals published in 1611. Its style is wildly experimental for its time; contrasting rhythms violently switching from slow to fast are combined with harmonic transitions rarely found in music of his contemporaries. For example, the opening chords of this piece are C sharp major followed by A minor.

Moro, lasso, al mio duolo,
e chi può darmi vita,
ahi, che m'ancide e non vuol darmi aita!
O dolorosa sorte,
chi dar vita mi può,
ahi, mi dà morte! 

I die, alas, in my suffering,
And she who could give me life,
Alas, kills me and will not help me.
O sorrowful fate,
She who could give me life,
Alas, gives me death.

Morten Lauridsen Six 'Firesongs' on Italian Renaissance Poems No.1

Famous for his choral music, American composer Morten Lauridsen wrote his fire songs based on the Italian madrigal style. Each song sets the words of an Italian love poem, inspired by the flames of love and passion. Lauridsen unites the six songs with a chord he calls the ‘fire-chord’ (B flat minor with an added C). Lauridsen said: ‘The choral masterpieces of the High Renaissance, especially the madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo, provided the inspiration for my own Madrigali. Italian love poems of that era have constituted a rich lyric source for many composers, and while reading them I became increasingly intrigued by the symbolic image of flames, burning and fire that recurred within this context.’

Ov’è, lass’, il bel viso? ecco, ei s’asconde.
Oimè, dov’il mio sol? Lasso, che velo
S’è post’inanti Te rend’oscur’il cielo?
Oimè ch’io il chiamo et veggio; ei non risponde.
Deh, se mai sieno a tue vele seconde
Aure, dolce mio ben, se cangi pelo
Et loco tardi, et se’l signor di Delo
Gratia et valor nel tuo bel sen’asconde,
Ascolta i miei sospiri et dà lor loco
Di volger in amor l’ingiusto sdegno,
Et vinca tua pietade il duro sempio.
Vedi qual m’arde et mi consuma fuoco;
Qual fie scusa miglior, qual maggior segno
Ch’io son di viva fede et d’amor tempio! 

Where, alas, is that lovely face? Behold, it is hidden.
Alack, where is my sun? Alas, what veil
now falls before it, darkening the sky?
Alack, I call to it, I see it; it answers not.
Ah, should propitious breezes ever fill
your sails, my sweet love, should you grow older,
and move elsewhere, and should Apollo of Delos
conceal grace and valour in your fair breast,
hear my sighs and permit that
they turn unjust disdain into love,
and let your mercy overcome this harsh torment.
See how flames burn and consume me;
what better reason, what greater sign be there
that I am a temple of love and true fidelity!

William Shakespeare: Fie on sinful fantasy

Claudio Monteverdi Sì ch'io vorrei morire

This secular madrigal was first published in 1603 in Monteverdi’s fourth book of madrigals. Monteverdi uses word painting to highlight the intensity of the poet’s emotions; for example, a sighing, descending and breathless figure for the opening line ‘Yes, I would like to die’ and an imitative, ascending phrase for ‘Ah, dear, sweet tongue’ which almost bursts into the next line ‘Give me so much...’

Sì, ch'io vorrei morire,
ora ch'io bacio, amore,
la bella bocca del mio amato core.
Ahi, car' e dolce lingua,
datemi tanto umore,
che di dolcezza in questo sen' m'estingua!
Ahi, vita mia, a questo bianco seno,
deh, stringetemi fin ch'io venga meno!
Ahi, bocca! Ahi, baci! Ahi, lingua! Torn' a dire:
Sì, ch'io vorei morire!

Yes, I would like to die,
now that I'm kissing, sweetheart,
the luscious lips of my darling beloved.
Ah! dear, dainty tongue,
give me so much of your liquid
that I die of delight on your breast!
Ah, my love, to this white breast
ah, crush me until I faint!
Ah mouth! Ah kisses! Ah tongue! I say again:
Yes, I would like to die!

Mari Esabel Valverde Before Spring 


Mari Esabel Valverde is an award-winning composer based in the United States. Commissioned in 2021 for the acclaimed men’s ensemble Cantus, ‘Before Spring’ was premièred on their concert tour ‘Song of the Universal’ beginning October 2022. This work is a setting of an original poem by Amir Rabiyah and serves as one of three in a choral set, representing creation.

Given the collaboration of transgender composer and transgender poet, the narrative of the song depicts sex as something restorative, creative, natural, and beautiful. Rabiyah’s words, crafted with vivid images of nascent spring, are notably gender indefinite, encouraging interpretations that reject prejudices of body shame, trans- and queer- phobias, and sex-negativity. As the melodic lines unfold in duets, individually, and in ensemble, they encounter various tonal areas.

Catullus 85: I Hate and I Love

Morten Lauridsen Six 'Firesongs' on Italian Renaissance Poems No.6

Se per havervi, oimè, donato il core,
Nasce in me quell’ardore,
Donna crudel, che m’arde in ogni loco,
tal che son tutto foco,
E se per amar voi, l’aspro martire
Mi fa di duol morire,
Miser! Che far debb’io
Privo di voi che siete ogni ben mio? 

If, alas, because I have given you my heart,
such flames are lit within me,
cruel lady, as to consume every part of me
so that I am naught but fire,
and if, because I love you, bitter pain
makes me die of sorrow,
poor wretch! what should I do
without you, who are all that I love?

Mechthild of Magdeburg: How God Answers the soul

William Walton Set Me As A Seal Upon Thine Heart

This piece was composed in 1938 for the wedding of Ivor Guest (son of Lady Alice Wimborne, with whom Walton was close at the time) and Lady Mabel Fox-Strangways. The text is from Song of Songs 8:6-7, celebrating courtship, marriage and the ideals of human love. The piece opens with a solo tenor line, which is later answered by a solo soprano towards the end of the anthem.

Kristina Arakelyan My Love Is Come To Me

The second of Arakelyan’s Love Songs, My Love Is Come To Me, sets a poem by Christina Rossetti which is full of sumptuous imagery. An up-beat syncopated riff in the accompaniment brings a joyful energy beneath this sweet love song.

William Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet - Excerpt from Act 2,  Scene vi

Peretti, Creatore, Weiss arr. Alan Billingsley Can't Help Falling in Love

‘Can't Help Falling in Love’ is a song recorded by American singer Elvis Presley for the album Blue Hawaii (1961). The melody is based on a popular French love song, ‘Plaisir d'amour’ composed in 1784 by Jean-Paul-Égide Martini. This arrangement for a capella choir features finger clicking and vocal percussion.

James MacMillan Lassie, Wad Ye Loe Me?

Macmillan’s setting of this anonymous Scots love poem was composed for the wedding of two of his friends. A simple folk-like melody is accompanied in various ways: first by the upper voices humming, then a tenor and bass verse, then a full choir climax followed by a return to the humming to finish. Each of the voice parts in the choir divide sometimes into three or four different parts which creates rich choral textures for a romantic love story; the narrator declares his love even though he has no riches to offer. The touching twist in the text comes in the final line ‘Lassie, but I loe you.’

Emily Dickinson: Wild Nights

John Farmer Fair Phyllis

Performed by half of our choir tonight, this is an English madrigal published in 1599. The madrigal is set for four voices and uses imitation. It alternates between triple and duple meter and uses word painting to highlight the story; for example, the opening line ‘Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone’ is set for a single voice to depict her being alone.

Trad. (Improvisation) Greensleeves

The choir have devised a short interlude using the melody of Greensleeves to take us from Farmer’s madrigal to Morley’s Now is the Month of Maying...

Thomas Morley Now Is The Month of Maying

The other half of our choir now sing Morley’s Now is the Month of Maying which was written in 1595. This is a ‘ballett’ which is a part song similar to a madrigal and dance-like in style. It frequently has a fa-la-la chorus.

Michael Field : Stream & Pool

Alex Groves Stream & Pool

Stream and Pool is a love song and a testament to the many powerful, unseen forces that act on us within our relationships. Calm surfaces belie strong currents and small ripples are weathered by endless tides. The text is drawn from Stream and Pool by Michael Field - the pseudonym for poets and lovers Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper. The images and descriptions of water in the poem are at first abstracted completely, before being contextualised and eventually stripped away for the more human elements of the poem. Stream and Pool was written for EXAUDI and premièred by them in Milton Court Concert Hall at the Barbican Centre on Monday 16th May, 2022.

Ludwig Jacobowski: Leuchtende Tage (Radiant Days)

Percy Grainger Mo Nighean Dubh

Percy Aldridge Grainger was born in Australia but moved to live in the United States in 1914 and became a US citizen. He was a composer, arranger and pianist. Although he wrote a lot of experimental music, in Britain, Grainger’s main legacy is the revival of interest in folk music. This pioneering work in recording and setting of folk songs influenced the next generation of English composers, including Benjamin Britten. Mo Nighean Dubh was a folk melody that Grainger harmonised around 1899. The Gaelic title translates to ‘My Dark-Haired Maiden’.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: Love’s Philosophy

Mari Esabel Valverde Best Wishes

Both words and music are written by the composer in this final piece tonight:
‘Let your love be ever blessed. Let you hold yourselves with love, And your days be simply filled with joy.’

THE CHOIR

SOPRANO
Lindsey James
Sarah Keirle
Charlotte Laidlaw
Elspeth Piggott
Megan Rickard

ALTO
Jessica Conway
Joseph Judge
Lucy Vallis
Louise Wood

TENOR
Louis de Satgé
Andrew Morton
Charlie Perry
Joseph Taylor

BASS
Jonathan Ainscough
Jonny Hill
Patrick Osborne
Edmund Phillips

BSL Interpreter
Paul Whittaker

THE TEAM

Artistic Director Ellie Slorach
General Director Claire Shercliff
Communications Coordinator Eve Powers
Design Sam Gee

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