Ian looks serious Ian McQueen vocal music
biographyreviews & commentarieseducational activitiesmusic for young playerschamber musicorchestral musicoperasorder music & recordingslatest activitylinkscontact

Earthly Paradise(2010) for chorus and orchestra

BBC commission, premiered at the Barbican London in April 2010, by the BBC sympphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Sir Andrew Davis

Duration: 43 minutes

Lo, from our loitering ship at last
A new land to be seen ...

Earthly Paradise is cast in four large scale sections like the movements of a symphony. It contrasts extracts from The Hill of Venus (the last of Morris’s huge collection of verse tales The Earthly Paradise) with three other shorter poems: The Doomed Ship (memories of the love triangle between Morris, his wife Jane and Dante Gabriel Rossetti); O Dwellers on the Lovely Earth (which might be a kind of “Ecological Warning”); and Iceland First Seen (see above quote), which recounts the frisson Morris felt on first arriving in what he called “The Holy Land.”

Orchestra
picc, 2fl, 2 obs, cor ang, 2 cl, bass cl, 2 bsn, dble. bsn, 4 hn, 3 tpt, 3 tbn, bass tbn, tuba, timp, hp, 4 perc, large S.A.T.B. Chorus, strings

 

Other Vocal and Choral Music:
Dreams for Marcie
Judith's Doubt and Resolve
Every Day You Play
Diversity
La belle dame sans merci