Chaos in fourteen lines Cast in two parts, Timothy Raymond’s cycle of seven songs represents a kind of musical portrait of an American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, whose reputation as a master of verse, and of the sonnet in particular, was offset by her adventurous – even notorious – personal life. A ‘Counting-out Rhyme’ (the genre of the children’s ‘One potato, two potato …’ game) opens the sequence and recurs in fragments as a kind of Mussorgskyan link (like the ‘Promenade’ in Pictures) both between and within a few of the songs. As in some counting-out games, the rhyme might partly be understood as a metaphor for something of a quasi-fatalistic nature.
Part I explores themes of love, regretting its loss and sometime futility. Part II, opening with the lightest song in the work, rapidly darkens to a nightmarish mood and concludes with the sonnet (fourteen lines) that, paraphrased, gives the work its title. Its succinct expression of the philosophical and technical dilemmas of the poet, as she struggles to put the violent and demonic tyranny of existential Disorder into the Order of the poem, is reminiscent of the age-old conflict of Dionysus and Apollo — the archetype that has underpinned so much artistic endeavour.
Chaos in fourteen lines was commissioned by Canadian pianist Margaret Bruce.
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Composer:Timothy Raymond Publication date: March 2024 Instruments: Soprano and piano Format: Full score Duration:c.10' Pages: vi/26 ISMN: 979 0 708213 17 8 Code:HH602.FSC Price: £15.00 more information
The ten motets (Concerti sacri) Op. 3 by Giuseppe Aldrovandini (1671–1707), for solo bass voice, violins and continuo, are among the composer’s most attractive works. Published in Bologna in 1703, they stand on the borderline between seventeenth-century bel canto and the progressive trends represented by Alessandro Scarlatti and, later, Antonio Vivaldi. The two motets published here (the concluding concerti of the set) delight through their euphony and the sheer swagger of Aldrovandini’s vocal writing.
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Composer:Giuseppe Aldrovandini Editor:Michael Talbot Publication date: March 2024 Instrument: Bass, two violins and basso continuo Format: Full score and parts Series:Baroque Pages: xi/37 + 2 x 4 + 2 x 8 ISMN: 979 0 708213 05 5 ISBN: 978 1 914137 55 6 Code:HH590.FSP Price: £24.00 More information
Den lille danserinnen (‘The Little Ballerina’) evokes a charming, gracious, light-footed dancer, while Nocturne makes the piano sing in the romantic tradition. Both these delightful short pieces would be ideal encores!
Composer:Christian Hartmannn Publication date: April 2016 Instruments: Piano Format: Performing score Duration:c.4' Pages: iii/4 ISMN: 979 0 708146 15 5 Code: HH398.SOL Price: £7.95 More information