As a request from a singer who reads this blog, I have written a couple of vocal duets (without accompaniment) for people to sing together over the internet. Through a search for antiphonal poetry, I found my way to Christopher Smart (1722-1771), and his Jubilate Agno, which you can read in (fragemented) full here.
What a life he had!
I chose two sections of the poem to set as a musical dialog for two voices. They sound best if sung by a soprano or mezzo voice on top, and a tenor or baritone voice on the bottom, but they could just as easily be sung with voices in the same octave. The main thing is that they can be used as a way to connect musically for friends who are otherwise unable to do so.
For a person with rudimentary video-editing skills (and rudimentary video-editing software), it is not hard at all to make a split-screen video "performance" when you have a antiphonal piece, because you don't need to do anything elaborate to synchronize the parts. Starting both parts at the same time is really enough.
You can find the music on this page of the IMSLP.
I am, of course, not the first person to set parts of this poem as music. After I finished my work, I looked around, and found that Benjamin Britten had set one of the fragements I chose. It's an obvious musical choice, I suppose, since it is the passage about instrumental sounds. I was happy to see that Britten also adjusted the lines of poetry to fit his needs, and he eliminated the lines that I used as a "refrain." Interesting.
2 comments:
Thank you! A lovely piece, and to a text by Christopher Samrt -- who could ask for more!
I hope you and your Jamulus friends enjoy singing it! (If so, I would love to hear a recording.)
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