Year: June 2019
Voices: SATB with soprano soloist and occasional divisi
Duration: 5:40”
Text: English, Euan Tait

Difficulty: 5

Performance History: Read-through performance by the Chamber Choir Ireland in NCH Dublin, 24th Jan 2020.

About: Written for The Contemporary Music Centre Choral Sketches project. A feature on the project is available here. This piece was a collaboration with Scottish poet Euan Tait and the Chamber Choir Ireland to create a new piece of choral music through a series of workshops and feedback sessions, mentored by composer Tarik O’Regan.

Text:

i. When the city became the sea
Where the city was,
the lough is now the city’s voices.
Its waters burning in the sun,
tearing the mountains to pieces.
The great sea here is accuser
and crowded courtroom.
Here is no city singing,
but only the voice of the sea.

ii. Unravelling psalm
The song is fraying rope
tearing as it is woven
overhead.
The song snaps in the air,
its fragments fall,
ash rain.
Missing creatures
crowd the body,
guttural.

iii. Cumha
The frost is rare,
that underfoot snap
rises to so high a pitch
we barely hear,
yet branches stir
far above us.
We know, now,
we are onslaught
not companion
to songs not sung
by falling birds:
trees groan
as we approach.

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