Whispers

Description

Choir 1, Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, Choir 2, Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass, Piano — Whispers was conceived as a companion piece to my 1979 composition Drop, Drop, Slow Tears (published by Merion Music, 342-40187), a work that Chanticleer sings beautifully. That earlier work is constructed around a reminiscence of the music of the Elizabethan composer Orlando Gibbons. Similarly, Whispers recalls fragments of William Byrd’s famous motet Ave verum corpus (published 1605), surrounding those fragments with my own setting of lines from Walt Whitman’s Whispers of Heavenly Death (1868). In both the Whitman and the Byrd, thoughts and images of death are so transmuted by the power of great art that the result is not sadness, but instead a kind of mystical exaltation. This is a blessing that we need more than ever in our own time, and one that the superb singing of Chanticleer has delivered to listeners (and composers) for a quarter-century. Inspired as much by Chanticleer’s own artistry and style as by Byrd or Whitman, then, this little piece is offered in celebration of those twenty-five wonderful years. Commissioned in 20012 by Chanticleer. Whispers was conceived as a companion piece to Steven Stucky's 1979 composition Drop, Drop, Slow Tears, a work that Chanticleer sings beautifully.