A current project... Still (Pt. 1)

Happy New Year!! If you have made it one of your resolutions of 2019 to compose more music, then you have come to the right place!

I'm starting off this new year with a blog post on one of my current and most exciting projects, which is a piece to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Strathearn School in Belfast. The school’s Chamber Choir, directed by Heather McIvor, were the BBC Songs of Praise Young Choir of the Year, and so it was on the back of their success that I was commissioned to write a piece for them. As a past pupil of the school, this is a project that is very close to my heart! Straight away, a direct commission comes with both limitations and responsibilities. This piece was to be for unaccompanied school girls’ voices, SSAA, and therefore my approach to writing had to reflect this context. I wanted to write a piece that the girls would enjoy singing and that they would feel reflects them well.

For me the actual compositional process of a project like this can vary significantly in length. I tend to take a long period of time to think through ideas and plan my piece, and then actually write the music in a fairly short period of time. With this commission, I couldn’t wait to get started with writing the music, but finding the right text to set began to become an issue. I often find that choosing the right text is one of the hardest parts of my compositional process. It is so important to get the right text, since it will really shape the line and structure of the music, and I am therefore very fussy! The aim of this piece was to celebrate the life and personality of a thriving and successful school, and so the text I chose needed to reflect these things. After weeks of scrolling through websites and numbing through poetry books, I found nothing that fitted what I had in mind, and so I realised I would have to think outside the box. Seeing as what I most wanted in my text was something that would reflect the character and essence of the school, what better way to communicate that then by getting someone who is a current pupil to express it themselves in their own words. So, Idé Simpson, a sixth form pupil at the school, agreed to write a text, and I couldn’t have been happier! Straight away Idé was so on board with the ideas in my head, and began planning how she was going to approach writing it.

Sometimes it can be the things that seem like challenges or setbacks that end up making a project! For me, the frustration of not being able to find the right text in this instance led to an idea that ending up moulding the whole project into something so much more fresh, personal and exciting. I love that in the process of composing you can plan as much as you want, but you will never be able to predict exactly the direction you will be taken in. Idé’s text is truly beautiful; she has metaphorically described her journey through school as a voyage on the sea:

On the waves it all seems clear

I wonder brave and strong

Yet should misfortune turn my cheek

Still, You carry me along

We face the fear of the rising tide,

Sea of desire

Yet when my boat is lost to the wind

Still, You lift me higher

Come to the water’s edge

Come and take my hand

For even when you’re all alone

The moon will understand

Waves dance at the water’s edge

They come and take my hand

For even when I’m all alone

Still, You wait upon the sand

I really love the imagery of Ide’s words, and the natural fluidity of them. When I choose a text to set, the most important thing for me is that it is almost singing off the page before I even think about the music, and these words are such a great example of that! Idé honestly made my job very easy, as the natural rhythm and movement of the words gave me such a great basis to start from.  Since the piece was to be unaccompanied, it needed to have a natural movement in the vocal parts, and so I created an ostinato-like motif that is based around a rocking pattern of oscillating quavers, to invoke the constant fluidity and movement of the sea. This motif starts in the 2nd Alto part, but passes through each of the four parts in some form throughout the course of the piece. I wanted to make the actual melody very simple and pretty, to in a sense float over the other movement of the piece and be the constant amidst other developments. Harmonically I have also gone for simplicity, because of who the piece is for, and because it seems to fit well with the natural innocence and beauty that the words invoke. I hope that the girls will embrace the beauty and simplicity of this piece, and want to express their own love for their school in the way that they sing it.

Look out for a Part 2 blog post on this piece, when I will talk more about the process of bringing this commission from paper to performance…

Written by Stephanie Devlin