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Sheet Music: ScoreWasted and worn, op. 6 : part song for a cappella SSAATTBB choir / Jonathan David Little ; lyrics by John Leicester Warren, Lord of Tabley.by Jonathan David Little (2016)
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Product details
Marked at the head of the score, "Bittersweet and With Dignity (yet always expressive)", this work is dedicated to the memory of the artist, John William Godward (1861-1922) - whose work was largely overlooked during his lifetime - yet who ploughed on regardless, despite being ostracised by his own family in the pursuit of his art, and its technical perfection. Radically changing tastes and the aftermath of the First World War led him to feel that the possibility of realising an artistic golden age had vanished, ultimately leading him to take his own life. Upon reaching the culmination of many years of work, and at the height of his powers, Godward's art had become "old-fashioned", and seemingly worthless overnight, yet he was never truly recognised for the brilliance of his images even when he was creating them (a situation only rectified several decades later). Godward's fate is perhaps representative of the condition of many hardworking and talented solitary artists, especially those lacking early advantage; and so the score of Wasted and Worn also includes this head-quotation from Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard (1751) by Thomas Gray (1716-71):
"Along the cool sequester'd vale
of life / They kept the noiseless tenour of their
way."
Wasted and worn that passion must
expire,
Which swept at sunrise like a sudden fire
Across the whitened crest of happy waves.
Now lonely in a labyrinth of graves,
His footsteps foiled, his spirit bound and numb,
Grey Love sits dumb.
[From: "A Parting", in Orpheus in Thrace and Other Poems, 1901]
John Byrne Leicester Warren, Lord de Tabley (1835-1895)
Published by: Wirripang [979 0 720249 94 0] — 1 score (56p. -- A4 (portrait))
Difficulty: Advanced — Multi-line, a cappella; some semitone clashes.
Duration: 12 mins
Commissioned with funds provided by Australia Council.
First sketches 2005; completed March 2016.
The composer notes the following styles, genres, influences, etc associated with this work:
Historically-informed compositional style has been variously described as "Ecstatic Minimalism", "Archaic Futurism", and “Picturesque Archaism” – blending art music, folk/Celtic, and other sacred and secular musical influences, from as far back as the fourteenth century, with new and innovative textures and orchestration (sometimes also including spatial effects).
Typeset edition.
This edition produced Apr 17.
ISMN: 979 0 720249 94 0
Related products
This work is also available in the following products:
CD: Woefully arrayed : sacred & secular choral & polychoral works / by Jonathan David Little.
- Browse other works published by Wirripang
- Browse other works for SATB choir (unaccompanied) with soloists
- Browse other works by Jonathan David Little
Analysis & Media
- Resonate Article: Composing 'polychoral' music
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