Colin Eatock

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Soprano, violin, cello, theorbo; ca. 7 min.

The composer writes: This composition was inspired by a conversation with a friend about sadness in music. He suggested several symphonic movements as candidates for the title  of "the saddest music in the world"; but I held firm to my conviction that the saddest music ever penned was the aria "When I am Laid," from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas.

I'm pleased to acknowledge that my setting of Oscar Wilde's poem Requiescat owes much to Purcell's "When I am Laid." Like Purcell's famous aria, my song is a "baroque" setting: a passacaglia, in a slow 3/4 metre. As well, my text  written by Wilde after the death of his sister, Isola, at the tender age of nine  is intensely tragic.

Requiescat (2024)

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The composer writes: I almost titled this work "Four Elizabethan Love Songs." However, while such a title might be appropriate for a group of songs about the joys of loving relationships, the texts I have chosen do not all fit that mould. Of the four, only Christopher Marlowe's seductive "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and Shakespeare's wise and insightful Sonnet 116 address requited love. On the other hand, John Donne's "The Message" is a "hate-song"  an angry poem about love gone wrong, bursting with bitter recriminations. And Elizabeth I's "When I Was Fair and Young," is wistful and full of regret: the Queen realizes that her own youthful pride has obstructed her opportunities for happiness. Together, these poems offer four dramatically contrasting views about love.

Four Elizabethan Songs About Love (2016-2018)

SATB Full Score

The composer writes: Little is known of Francis Kindlemarsh (or Kinwelmersh), the poet who wrote this text. It is believed he was from Essex, and that he studied law in London in the 1550s, where he also took part in the literary and theatrical life of Gray's Inn.
 
His "Cast Off All Doubtful Care," could be viewed as an early example of metaphysical poetic style, with its elaborate use of metaphor and imagery.
 
Kindlemarsh evidently became known to William Byrd, who first set this poem to music. Byrd's setting was published in 1589, in a collection of works by the English composer entitled "Songs of Sundrie Natures."

Cast Off All Doubtful Care (2012)

The composer writes: When the word "corona" entered daily use in the year 2020, I recalled the Motetti de la Corona: a book of popular motets published by Ottaviano Petrucci in Italy, in 1514. The volume contained part-songs with sacred texts in Latin, written by the leading composers of the day, including Josquin, Mouton, De Fevin and others. The publication was popular, and Petrucci went on to publish another four books of motets under the same name.

Three of my own Motetti de la Corona are settings of texts excerpted from Petrucci's publication: "Ecce Maria," "Christum ducem" and "Sancta Trinitas." The "Ave Maria" draws on the Book of St. Luke for its text. And "De profundis" (Psalm 129 or 130, depending on the numbering system used) has been set to music by many composers, from Josquin to Part. Its cry for help seemed an appropriate response to a time of global pandemic.

Motetti de la Corona (2020)

The composer writes: By the time it reached its ninth edition, in 1892, Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" had become a work of cosmic scale, encompassing a vast range of human emotion and experience. (Like Whitman himself, the poet's magnum opus is large and contains multitudes.) Here, I have chosen two Whitman poems: the first is a vivid yet metaphoric portrayal of the physical world; the second takes us into the realm of the metaphysical.

Two Poems by Walt Whitman (2017)

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Three movements; piano; ca. 12 min.

The composer writes: My Suite for Piano (1995) is a "signature piece," beginning and ending with my initials (the notes C and E). My first (acknowledged) work for piano solo, it makes prominent use of extended pedal effects. It was written at the request of Toronto pianist Roland Starr, to whom it is dedicated.

Suite for Piano (1995)

Piano

The composer writes: It is widely acknowledged by scholars that the Psalms were written to be sung. And over the centuries, composers have responded to this implicit challenge, finding in them a rich source of inspiration. Here I have chosen three contrasting psalms  23, 46, and 146  expressing contentment, distress and celebration.

Three Psalms (2018)

The composer writes: My inspiration for these three short canzonas was music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, well suited to brass instruments, by such composers as Giovanni Gabrieli and Samuel Scheidt. I have imitated the structures and textures of this noble music, in the context of my own harmonic language.

Three Canzonas for Brass Quartet (1991)

2 Trumpets, 2 Trombones Quartet

The composer writes: The text for Hosanna filio David is appropriate to Palm Sunday. (The “filio David” is, of course, Jesus.) Musically, it was sung as a Gregorian chant; but has also been set to music by such composers as Franz Schubert and Tomás Luis de Victoria. The text is drawn from St. Matthew and Psalm 117.

Hosanna filio David (2022)

SATB

Two movements; soprano, clarinet/viola, piano; ca. 9 min.

The composer writes: Ashes of Soldiers (2010) is in two movements: the first is for clarinet (or viola) and piano; in the second, a soprano is added to the instrumental duo. Thematically, the two movements  which are performed without pause  are closely related. Rather than composing two contrasting, discrete pieces, my intention was to make the second movement a continuation and development of the musical ideas introduced in the first.

 The text is based on a poem by Walt Whitman, from his Leaves of Grass. Despite the poem's specific setting in Civil War era USA, its theme is universal: the mourning of all soldiers who have died in battle, regardless of their allegiances.

Ashes of Soldiers is dedicated to my father, Alan James Eatock, who was a soldier at one point in his life, and who passed away in 2010.

Ashes of Soldiers (2010)

Soprano Full Score

The composer writes: I chose to set four of the five stanzas of Christina Rossetti's famous text of 1872 to music for two reasons. First, I liked the poem. I was attracted to Rossetti's profound metaphysical imagery, curiously and yet comfortably wedded to a kind of Pre-Raphaelite simplicity.
 
The second reason was because I had never heard any of the previous settings of this poem. I was aware that Gustav Holst, Benjamin Britten, Harold Darke and others had composed settings of the text, but it was only after I had written my own version that I listened to these works. I saw my ignorance as a virtue, as it meant that I would not be unduly influenced by those who had gone before me.

In the Bleak Mid-Winter (1998)

The composer writes: The author of the poem "O Magnum Mysterium" is unknown. Originally the text for a Gregorian chant, it was later used in polyphonic motets of the 16th century  and many settings have been composed since then. Perhaps the enduring appeal of the poem is based on its simple depiction of Christ's humanity and humility, together with its expression of devotion to his mother, Mary.
 
In composing my own setting, it pleased me to think of the choir as representing the worldly creatures (people and animals) present at Jesus's birth; and the saxophone as an otherworldly, mystical presence hovering above. It's a fanciful notion, but I found it inspiring.

O Magnum Mysterium (2023)

The composer writes: At the age of 40, I wrote my Sinfonietta (1999). Its three movements are lively and rhythmically erratic, slow and introspective, and lively but rhythmically stable. It was not until many years later that I heard a good performance of my Sinfonietta  and I decided that I quite liked the structure of the piece. And my Trio for Woodwinds (2023) is, broadly speaking, modelled after my Sinfonietta.

The outer movements are highly chromatic, making extensive use of octatonic scales, while the contrasting middle movement is almost pandiatonic in its harmonic language.

Also, in choosing to compose for just three instruments, I created a problem for myself. The basic "building blocks" of my music are usually four-note chords  so how was I to write for a medium in which a four-note chord is impossible? I enjoyed the challenge!

Trio for Woodwinds (2023)

Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon

The composer writes: This concert overture was inspired by a 1922 watercolour painting by Wassily Kandinsky, To the Sea and the Sun. Kandinsky was himself influenced by music, and believed there are strong connections between visual and aural art-forms. ("Music is the ultimate teacher," he said.) I like to think that the dramatic colours and bold lines of Kandinsky's abstract art are in some way analogous to my use of instrumental colour and texture in this short orchestral work.

To the Sea and the Sun (2023)

Full Orchestra Score & Parts

The composer writes: A few years before I composed these settings by three American poets, I composed my Four Elizabethan Songs About Love (2016-2018). The texts I've used in Three American Poems About Love (2020) bring us forward in time about three centuries, and transpose the location from England to the USA. However, like the poems in the Elizabethan set, the texts in my American set are not all conventional love songs. The first, "Invitation to Love" (by Paul Laurence Dunbar) is a glowing reflection on the nature of love itself, rather than an expression of love directed towards a specific other. The second, "Spring Night" (by Sara Teasdale) is a wistful reflection on lovelessness, despite the consolations of beauty. Only the third, "Our Love" (by James Russell Lowell) is a love song in the conventional sense: a profession of enduring love between two people.

Three American Poems About Love (2020)

Three movements; flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, percussion, strings; ca. 14 min.

The composer writes: I began to compose my Sinfonietta (1999) in the year after I turned 40. It occurred to me that by my age Schubert had been dead for nine years, Mozart for five and Mendelssohn for two  and that while I was still happily breathing, I had not yet written an orchestral work in symphonic form. So I cleared my desk of other projects and devoted all my composing time in the year 1999 to this task.
 
Many of my works are historically conceived, and the Sinfonietta (1999) is no exception. In many respects it resembles an early classical symphony. But the piece diverges from its classical models in several ways: whereas classical-period composers tended to use wind instruments in pairs, here only the horns are paired, and there is only one flute, one oboe, one clarinet, etc. This choice of instrumentation gives the piece a colourful quality, and at times produces textures reminiscent of chamber music.
 
The first movement is a kind of sonata, characterized by irregular meters and a chromatically descending motif. The second movement is slow and lyrical, in a simple ABA form, with some nice tunes. The third movement is a rondo, full of boisterous, driving rhythms, and culminating in a grand finale.

Sinfonietta (1999)

String Orchestra Score & Parts

The composer writes: Rabindranath Tagore's Song Offerings are the poet's own English-language translations of his Bengali-language Gitanjali. While Tagore's translations are not exactly literal, they present to the Western world a window into the tradition of Hindu devotional poetry. (Tagore won the 1913 Nobel Prize for literature for the collection.)

The four excerpts I have chosen to set to music, love and beauty are recurring themes, richly elaborated with images from nature. But as with many of the poems in Gitanjali: Song Offerings, the "love" and "beauty" can be interpreted as either worldly or spiritual.

Four Song Offerings (2020)

Soprano Solo w/ String Quartet

The composer writes: The words for this short anthem are derived from A Hymn for Easter Day, with a text by the eighteenth-century Lancashire poet John Byrom. Byrom's hymn was evidently popular, and was sung in churches throughout England.

According to a book called Memorials of Hindley (a memoir of daily life in the town of Hindley, Lancashire, published in 1873), the hymn was a favourite of an amateur singer named Timothy Eatock, who used to sing the opening verse as a solo in the local church. This Timothy Eatock was, I believe, my great-great-great-great grandfather.

The Lord is Risen! (2021)

Language

The composer writes: The texts for these three songs are excerpted from William Blake's poem of 1793, America: a Prophesy. This epic work is a commentary on the American Revolution  although not in any literal or conventional sense. Here, Blake creates a visionary world in which allegorical forces representing liberty and tyranny battle for supremacy in the New World.

Three Songs from Blake's "America" (1987)

Bass Full Score

The composer writes: Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was born into a prosperous Massachusetts family. A poet, critic and biographer, she was a leading exponent of the imagist movement, and was for a time closely allied with Ezra Pound. Her obituary stated, "She was upon the surface of things a Lowell, a New Englander and a spinster. But inside, everything was molten like the core of the earth." In 1926, she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
 
Some of Lowell's poetry was written for or about the actress Ada Dwyer Russell, with whom Lowell shared a "Boston marriage" (a 19th-century euphemism for a lesbian relationship) for more than a decade. I have chosen three of Lowell's love poems for this set of choral songs. All three are concise and emotionally intense; vivid yet elegant in their imagery.

Three Poems by Amy Lowell (2018)

Global Sections - CORE [DO NOT TOUCH]*

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