My new setting of The Darkling Thrush is now available here through NoteNova Publishing.
This was my first commission from San Francisco Choral Artists, now available in SATB (the original is SSSAAATTTBBB). This new version is appropriate for choirs of all levels.
In Thomas Hardy’s poem The Darkling Thrush, a bleak winter landscape is suddenly illuminated by birdsong. The joyous music seems odd coming from such an ragged, bedraggled creature… What does it know that we don’t? My setting presents the text as is, then rewords it from the point of view of the bird. This latter half of the piece incorporates fragments of melody based on actual field recordings of the hermit thrush, the wood thrush, and the veery.