Tomorrow's Brighter

The Prelude and Fugue in B flat major is an iconic piece, one of the better known in this wonderful set. The Prelude is toccata-like in its broken arpeggiated chords, interspersed with extended scalic ideas, the freely-flowing style somewhat reminiscent of the older Baroque Master and great influence on Bach, Dieterich Buxtehude. Grand chords signal a still freer scalic journey, before a final upward arpeggio flourish takes us rippling to the top of the keyboard. The following Fugue has a lengthy subject, an elastic opening stretching the intervals, but then with tumbling semiquavers and repeated motifs providing characteristic figuration for the rest of the piece, the counter-subject itself also suggesting an inversion of the opening bar of the subject. In its relatively straightforward yet concentrated form and content, the fugue provides a suitably reassuring counterpoise to the drama of the Prelude.

Prelude And Fugue B Flat

Art picture by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Une Fantaisie Opus 21

A new dreamy synthy poppy track!
Hope you'll enjoy :)

Picture by Ivana Cajina on Unsplash

More Of The Same

The traditional 15th Century text, LULLAY, MY LIKING is woven into a new hauntingly beautiful piece with expressive textures as it unfolds. The gentle lyrics have such a positive message. A great SATB selection for good community choirs and professional groups at seasonal winter concerts. Available at Cypress Choral Music: https://cypresschoral.com/composers/gerda-blok-wilson/lullay-my-liking/. gerdablokwilson.ca 

The composition was recorded by the Elora Singers (2021), Mark Vuorinen, conductor: https://www.elorasingers.ca/radiant-dawn-cd/

“Vancouver-based Gerda Blok-Wilson’s Lullay My Liking is a refreshingly new setting of the very old favorite.” David Vernier ClassicsToday.com

https://gerdablokwilson.ca/

The Elora Singers

Lullay My Liking

Thinking about my daddy and me.  Our last picture together.

Many thanks to David Dunham for mastering my track. @david-dunhamuser589535203

I Wish

Do you like spiders? The Victorian writer Charlotte M Yonge liked spiders as part of the natural world and wrote the poem 'The Gossamer Spider' to counterbalance more negative views of spiders in other poems for children.

David Barton was commissioned by Ruth and Nic Carlyle to produce this musical setting of 'The Gossamer Spider' for the 2023 bicentenary of the birth of Charlotte M Yonge. It is recorded here by Ruth Carlyle and David Barton. The album cover is by Nic Carlyle.

The Gossamer Spider
By Charlotte M Yonge

Creature no bigger than a pin,
Most wonderful of all that spin,
	An acrobatic fairy.
Nay, what rope dancer from himself
Can draw his lines, like this small elf,
	Marking his progress airy.

O’er breezy downs, from bent to bent,
That slender, viewless pathway went,
	Traced in some moment’s shimmer;
But far too fine for common sight
Until the sunset’s sinking light
	Makes the whole network glimmer.

From here, now there, a rainbow gleam
Floats o’er the turf in silvery stream
	Of strange mysterious lightness
That early autumn’s frosts will strew
Each thread with glancing beads of dew,
	Jewels of flashing brightness.

Or when the winds the grasses shake,
They blend the films in snowy flake;
	So, said some ancient rhymer,
The lovely lady of the sky,
In twilight floating, green earth nigh,
	There dropped her silvery cymar.

Notes:
1.	“cymar” = scarf or “gottes-sammer”. Yonge notes that it was associated with Freya, but in Yonge’s time (mid 19th Century) had become the Virgin Mary’s gossamer, or Les fils de la Vierge in France and I filament de la Madonna in Italy.
2.	Poem undated, but published in 1881 as part of Aunt Charlotte’s Evenings At Home with the Poets: A collection of poems for the Young, with conversations, arranged in Twenty-five Evenings.

Charlotte M Yonge: The Gossamer Spider - David Barton, 2023

A song by Stacey Kent that I can’t seem to find anywhere for purchase, so I decided to upload it myself. Sorry if you’re reading this, Stacey. I’ll buy the album as soon as you release it!

Come Live With Me (No Intro) - Stacey Kent

Bob Chilcott brings a sense of a sparkling, cold world to his setting of Christina Rossetti's poem 'In the bleak midwinter'. This solo version was published by Oxford University Press following the success of the original choral setting, published in 1994. The recording here is a live recording by Ruth Carlyle (voice) and David Barton (piano) made in December 2023. The illustration is by Nic Carlyle.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Mid-winter - Bob Chilcott, ed. 2021

Sunken Daffodil - solo piece piece for the latest solo piano collection

Sunken Daffodil

If there are angels - Cecilia McDowall 
with
Karen Smith ~ piano

This recording was created during the 2020 COVID-19 Lockdown. It was a challenge with all involved residing across three different households. The result is a marker of the time and how musicians around the world adapted in order to #keepthemusicplaying.

If there are angels - Cecilia McDowall

Ruth is based in Lichfield, UK, and sings mostly classical and traditional folk music. She also writes lyrics (as Eleanor Ruth Carlyle) and collaborates on new music with David Barton http://www.davidbartonmusic.co.uk/.

She  released her first EP with David Barton in November 2020: ‘Annabel Lee Replies’.

The songs on Ruth’s SoundCloud site are illustrated by her husband Nic Carlyle https://www.twitter.com/carlyle_nic

Ruth was a awarded a Distinction for London College of Music Examinations Grade 8 Classical Singing (100%) in July 2018 and the DipLCM (upper level) in July 2019.

Mid-winter - Bob Chilcott, ed. 2021

Ruth Carlyle

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