Ghosts

Bringing more spookiness into the choral genre, Takach has added a gem to the repertoire for developing TB voices. Ben Westlie's unique text supposes that ghosts are attracted to the happiness in our lives, and they are envious that we still get to experience joy. Takach uses the most of a limited vocal range and writes a relentless driving piano part in a way that develops the harmonic structure around the voices without giving the voices too much of a challenge. A winner for your TB ensemble. Text At night you can hear them, talking about when they were alive, when it was them sleeping in the room you now lie down in, shut your eyes in, to depart yourself for just a few hours. Sometimes they sound angry causing pipes to shout and floors to creak and you can't help but hear breathing which you tell yourself is just air finding the cracks in the window frame. Why shouldn't they display such bitterness, you're the body, the life, the memory, you get to still feel, you have the time they envy. You hold tighter to the warmth that is your shield. You hope the furnace will stop making footstep sounds outside your door, silently call for sleep to seduce you, but most of all you try to be very happy, if they do enter your room, it is the very heat your body releases when you feel joy that they glide into, becoming undead. Ben Westlie Composer's Notes I've always been fascinated by ghosts. I've never seen proof, but when I was a kid, my sister and I heard one in our house. Our parents were away for the evening, and as we were falling asleep we heard disturbances in the basement, in the kitchen. It's easy to be frightened by these sounds and unexplained events. But I love Ben Westlie's notion that they're envious of our existence. We have what they no longer have: physicality, warmth, happiness. The piano is dry, with no pedal throughout most of the piece. The incessant rhythm is meant to be a little disturbing at first, but by the end of the piece we are used to it, it has become a part of the landscape. There are moments of optional TB divisi in the piece, but if you choose to sing unison throughout, please omit the lower notes.