w19271
| Title | Way We Are, The |
| Contributors |
Derek Ball (composer) |
| Composition date | 2012 |
| Duration (mins) | 0 |
| Category | accompanied vocal |
| Instrumentation | Bar Pf |
| Commissioned by | |
| Key signature | |
| First line | |
| First performed | |
| Notes | A cycle of contemporary villanelles for baritone & piano. Part 1 - Villanelles 1-10 Part 2 - Villanelles 11-18 |
| Programme Note | The Way We Are (2012) We take the ubiquitous verse-and-refrain structure for granted: so many songs use it. The form is just inherently musical. And with its double refrain, the villanelle is doubly so! This is a large song cycle for baritone and piano, lasting about 80 minutes or more, in which every song is a villanelle and every villanelle poet is known to the composer. There are 8 poets who have generously provided existing poems or written them specially for me. One of the poems I wrote myself, almost involuntarily. As if to underline the musicality of the form, each half of the cycle contains a wordless villanelle. The poet Maurice Harmon inadvertently started me off, by sending me a newly-written villanelle, My tears come with me, and that became the opening song of the cycle. Richard Berengarten, also quite unsuspecting, sent me another villanelle not long afterwards, hence removing any slight doubts in my mind about the inevitability of the project. Songs by those two poets open the cycle and in reverse order eventually wind it up, each of the final songs echoing some material from the opening. A few of the other poets are also represented more than once, giving the structure a little extra coherence. But the villanelle form itself is the main unifying feature of the work. The order of songs is almost exactly the same as the order in which I composed them. I have made a break after the first 10 songs, but I'd be happy with other ways of introducing rest breaks for the singer, e.g. a brief interval between songs 5 and 6. Please note that there are two versions of the cycle. The first, this one, for baritone and piano, lasts at least 80 minutes and dates from 2012. (It was extensively revised and extended in 2013 and became a solo and duet cycle for soprano, baritone and piano, lasting at least 120 minutes). -Derek Ball |
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