Seascapes (30-copy licence PDF download)

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Seascapes, for unaccompanied choir, was commissioned by the BBC Singers as companion music to the Four Sea Interludes by Benjamin Britten, transcribed for the organ by Anna Lapwood. It was premiered at Temple church by the Singers conducted by Ben Palmer, nominated for an Ivor Novello prize 2022, and was the representative composition for the UK entry of the International Rostrum of Composers 2022. 

The four movements take the four Britten movements as inspiration, seen through the prism of the younger composer's musical language. Ranging from the painful lyricism of the third movement, Echo, to the wild energy of the final movement, Storm Wind, the musical language including melodies, structure and tonal centres are written in homage. The poetry by Christina Rossetti were chosen to reflect the narrative themes of the opera Peter Grimes. The compositions can be paired with the Four Sea Interludes or performed as standalone pieces.

It is a setting of poetry by Christina Rossetti

Movement I: Bird Raptures

The sunrise wakes the lark to sing,
The moonrise wakes the nightingale.
Come darkness, moonrise, every thing
That is so silent, sweet, and pale:
Come, so ye wake the nightingale.
Make haste to mount, thou wistful moon,
Make haste to wake the nightingale:
Let silence set the world in tune
To hearken to that wordless tale
Which warbles from the nightingale
O herald skylark, stay thy flight
One moment, for a nightingale
Floods us with sorrow and delight.
To-morrow thou shalt hoist the sail;
Leave us to-night the nightingale.

Movement II: By the Sea

Why does the sea moan evermore?
Shut out from heaven it makes its moan,
It frets against the boundary shore;
All earth's full rivers cannot fill
The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.
Sheer miracles of loveliness
Lie hid in its unlooked-on bed:
Anemones, salt, passionless,
Blow flower-like; just enough alive
To blow and multiply and thrive.
Shells quaint with curve, or spot, or spike,
Encrusted live things argus-eyed,
All fair alike, yet all unlike,
Are born without a pang, and die
Without a pang, and so pass by.

Movement III: Echo

Come to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimfull of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death:
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low
As long ago, my love, how long ago.

Movement IV:

Storm Wind

The wind has such a rainy
Sound moaning through the town,
The sea has such a windy
sound - will the ships go down?
The apples in the orchard tumble from their tree –
Oh will the ships go down, go down,
In the windy sea?

O Wind, Why Do You Never Rest

O wind, why do you never rest
Wandering, whistling to and fro,
Bringing rain out of the west,
From the dim north bringing snow?

Suitable for advanced choirs.