Powe, Jamie: The New Moon
From: £3.75
SATB Double Choir unaccompanied (with two Soprano solos)
Nothing in American poet Sara Teasdale’s life was comfortable, and Jamie Powe projects in high relief its painful conflicts and tensions through this five-minute setting of her autobiographical sonnet ‘The New Moon’. Pounding, repeated chords dominate the first half, driven onward by an urgently meaningful minimalism like the anger and despair that gripped Teasdale’s thoughts, in a world of suffering at the hands of a hostile day. Only a glimpse of the new moon brings hope and peace, in quietly redemptive tones of a hushed chorale. The writing for a cappella double choir is dramatic and lyrical by turns – and accomplished throughout, the skilful work of a young composer who is also a rising choral director.
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PROGRAMME NOTE
The poet Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) did not have an easy life. For most of it she was plagued with physical and mental illness, and she underwent a traumatic divorce. Despite these afflictions she won a Pulitzer Prize in 1918, and garnered a reputation for her passionate and highly personal verse. There are obvious parallels to her experience in her poem ‘The New Moon’, and I was drawn to its range of emotion and vivid imagery expressing a turbulent life. There is frustration, and accusation, at the personified day for the emotional and physical toil it has dealt her. Despite this, the conclusion is that hope and resilience may be found in everyday beauty. This silver sliver of a fledgling moon has potential, and it has future: there is always hope of new beginnings.
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