Sheena's notes on early repertoire
In my manuscript books I have found the following from the early days (unfortunately
mostly undated, or some post-dated when I started taking myself more seriously
but not seriously enough to realise that guessed dates are perhaps worse than
no dates at all):
- Summertime by George Gershwin (copyright holders please note -
this was never performed; choirs please note - I wrote a much better arrangement
last year for the Magpies and performed it with permission at the Columbus
Arts Festival in June, on the Town Street bridge, in a stiff most unsummerly
breeze)
- The Eriskay Love Lilt (dated 28/2/94 - probably reliably) - with
another Rudsambee hallmark of using a basic blueprint for the harmonies and
instructions about line-swapping in different verses.
- Southern French shepherds' call from the Pyrenees. Unfortunately
this has never been performed - it had too many parallel fourths and dissonant
drone sections (not to mention lack of bar lines) for newcomers and I shelved
it. But I still love it and it is exactly the sort of thing I now buy CDs
of (I shall here promote the Nordic singer Lena Willemark).
- Bohemian melody from 1505: de corpore Christi . It's marked 'Wiora
no. 41/1a' and I think it came from a library collection edited by Wiora.
Those who have sung Aurora rutilat would recognise some of the treatments
I gave this melody!
- Eriskay Love Lilt again, this time titled 'bassless variety' -
a reminder that in the early days a good bass was very hard to find. No different
from today of course, but in a group of six or seven you're more likely to
have no basses than in a group of twelve.
- Fhir a bhata. One page is labelled 'NOT THIS' which I think means
that this arrangement was fairly quickly superseded by a better one.
- Na'm biodh tri sgillin agam - Gaelic mouth music makes its first
appearance.
- She moved through the fair. First page displays another Rudsambee
feature of giving the men a basically instrumental drone line so they don't
have too much to do (sorry guys, you know how much I love you). But the second
page has an arrangement with the melody in the tenor, with accompanying chords
by the women and a smooth underlying bass part.
There then follows a rash of Gaelic music that I think we prepared for the
1994 North Fife Family Festival, which was run by someone Peter knew, in a picturesque
village called Luthrie. I remember Matthew approaching the line of singers in
mid-performance and attempting a rugby tackle on my knees, but we carried on.
- Bodachan ar-i-ar-o - mouth music (resurrected by Rudsambee in
about 1999).
- Cadal chan faigh mi. This was an attempt to merge early music
and Gaelic with a tune from a lovely collection Gair nan Clarsach
or 'The harp's cry' by Colm O Baoill (actually an anthology of 17th c. Gaelic
poetry but with a number of tunes included).
- Cha b'e 'n uiseag (with a note 'can omit tenor part'!) - lively
but we didn't use it much after that festival.
- Chuala mi e
- Cearcall a chuain
That's the end of the first manuscript book.
In another manuscript book, which carries a lot of 1996 dates, I found the
following (note that we were using hardly any printed music, though I know we
photocopied the odd round or two from Ravenscroft collections, for example):
- Body and soul - never used
- In dulci jubilo - a first go at the jazz version
- En etsi valtaa loistoa - realised from an edition for voice and
guitar, so not authentic Sibelius but with a Sibelius quality. Sari must have
joined the group by this point.
- Rainforest - words by Judith Wright. From the 'Poems from the
Underground' collection.
- The winter it is past - a Robert Burns tune (post-dated 3/96)
- Sang - my first William Soutar setting (post-dated 4/96)
- Primera Pagina - my first Lorca setting.
There's one other early manuscript book I can find, which reaches later, but
just for completeness I'll note what's in that one:
- A song for England (words by Andrew Salkey, who has since died)
- The Ocean's Sound - another piece from Gair nan Clarsach
which I never completed
- C'est le vent du large qui chante - a French round brought to
the group by Paul Carline
- Cota fad air Domnhull lom
- Tha bean agam
- A revised version of Chuala mi e
- 'S ann an Ile
- I will give my love an apple
- Pokare kare
- Solar Creation - I wrote this setting of a poem by Charles Madge
for my mother's 60th birthday, and I think we tried it once, but it was too
hard. It's slightly Holstian, but awkward in places. It modulates from C to
Db, which my uncle said you just can't do, but I did.
- The Lyke Wake Dirge - trad. arr Phillips and Hill
- Day is dune - William Soutar
- Innocent's song - words by Charles Causley. I remember we performed
this at the Steiner School Christmas Fair (1997?) and I later found out that
Ben Parry, who had just moved to Edinburgh and was there with friends from
the SCO, asked who had written the arrangement! (I clutch at what straws I
can)
