Composer Gabriel Jackson explores the creative process, building blocks and inspiration for his new choral work based on the poetry of Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Dancers Inherit the Party, which has its world premiere at New Music Dublin this April, performed by Chamber Choir Ireland and conductor Paul Hillier.
Paul Hillier and I are both long-time admirers of the great Scottish artist, gardener and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Back in the 1990s I wrote a triptych of instrumental pieces derived, in various parameters, from concrete poems and text-based artworks by Finlay.
Paul and I have always wanted to make a setting for voices of Ian's poems, so we are very grateful to the Cork International Choral Festival, Chamber Choir Ireland and New Music Dublin for making that happen.
The structure of this new piece, The Dancers Inherit the Party owes much to the Renaissance tradition of Lamentations settings, where the Hebrew letters preceding each verse are sung to melismatic, florid music and the verses themselves – in Latin – are much more syllabic and direct in their musical treatment.
Framing that sequence, there is often an oratorical Incipit and a final exhortation to 'Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominus Deum tuum’.
So in this piece, melismatic 5-part settings of Hamilton Finlay's poem Evening will come precede each of his short, pithy Seven Orkney Lyrics, which are, in turn, framed by settings of the title poem, The Dancers Inherit the Party.
The piece is a ‘constructed’ one in other aspects too: the Orkney lyrics are for one, two, three, four then three, two and one voice; the tempo of each poem gets progressively and proportionally quicker, and the duration progressively shorter until the mid-point, then the process is reversed; similarly, the tonic of each setting of Evening will come rises to that same mid-point and then descends to its starting point.
Various Medieval techniques and procedures – canon, organum, isorhythm, a kind of hocketing and drone-accompanied monody are also used in the construction of the musics for these poems, and they often have a slightly ‘folky’ demeanor which contrasts with the more fluid, freely composed Evening will come."
The Dancers Inherit the Party was commissioned by Cork International Choral Festival, Chamber Choir Ireland, and New Music Dublin with funding from the Arts Council/ Chomhairle Ealaíon.
The Dancers Inherit the Party is at the National Concert Hall, Dublin on Saturday 27 April as part of New Music Dublin 2024 - find out more here.
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