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Five Ambo Ghost Songs
1986
SATB chorus
duration 4'
first performance:
The BBC Singers, cond. Simon Joly
The Almeida Festival, London / May 23, 1986
SCORE
The Dove Stays in the Garden
I Have No Rattles
The Ghost is Gone in Rags
See How it Circles
Ah! the Roofs
SIDEBAR Hans Werner Henze had asked a few younger composers to write short works for the BBC Singers. The piece I submitted was a setting of Wind by James Fenton – a subject and treatment I thought would please Hans. Unfortunately it was gnarlier and longer than expected and I was asked to write another piece that would be more doable within the time constraints. I turned a work for voice and piano into this piece for chorus, but it was a last minute job with a not a very distinguished outcome. And then, feeling uncommitted to the piece, and probably a little pissy that my first effort hadn't sufficed, I arrived at the concert late having drunk too much with Mark-Anthony Turnage, my bff of the time and regular drinking buddy; an act of self-sabotage all too familiar from my clumsy 20s. Ah well! |
TEXTS
The Dove Stays in the Garden
The dove stays in the garden
Oh you dove
Oh that dove
I Have No Rattles
I have no rattles
am shabby
for the shades
The Ghost is Gone in Rags
The ghost is gone in rags
The ghost is gone in rags
And the ghost in rags
The ghost is gone in rags
See How it Circles
See how it circles
The airplane on its airdrome
Ah! the Roofs
Ah! the roofs
She climbs the roofs
The boy sleeps in the bush
This is like a swing
anonymous (Zimbabwe) trans. Bronislaw Stefaniszyn