A piece I wrote this summer, premiered (excellently!) by the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, who I sing with. The text is from a poem by the 16th century Scottish makar (bard) William Dunbar and it suggested music to me as soon as I read it:

Rorate coeli desuper!	 
  Hevins, distil your balmy schouris!	 
For now is risen the bricht day-ster,	 
  Fro the rose Mary, flour of flouris:	 
  The cleir Sone, quhom no cloud devouris,	         
Surmounting Phebus in the Est,	 
  Is cumin of his hevinly touris:	 
    Et nobis Puer natus est.	 
 
Archangellis, angellis, and dompnationis,	 
  Tronis, potestatis, and marteiris seir,	  
And all ye hevinly operationis,	 
  Ster, planeit, firmament, and spheir,	 
  Fire, erd, air, and water cleir,	 
To Him gife loving, most and lest,	 
  That come in to so meik maneir;	  
    Et nobis Puer natus est.	 
 
Sing, hevin imperial, most of hicht!	 
  Regions of air mak armony!	  
All fish in flud and fowl of flicht	 
  Be mirthful and mak melody!	 
  All Gloria in excelsis cry!	 
Heaven, erd, se, man, bird, and best,—	 
  He that is crownit abone the sky	  
    Pro nobis Puer natus est!

All Ye Hevinly Operations

Commissioned by my college's Music Society, here's the programme note from the première on the 22nd of February:

"I first read Blood Meridian during Choral Trials at Caius a few years ago, and it certainly cast a chill over those four otherwise perfect September days. Cormac McCarthy's novel charts the bloody path of a gang of mercenaries during the Mexican-American war with staggering literary ambitions, appropriating the register of Milton, Melville and the King James Bible to describe a world without any of his models' moral order, where "only war endures, and war is god". But, to my mind, the most arresting thing about the novel is not its characters but its many landscape descriptions: McCarthy's godless world is nonetheless shot through with beauty, and my piece tries both to depict this disparity and question its implications."

Another Kind Of Clay

A choral piece I wrote for the wedding of Stephen and Zoe Balogh, good friends of mine, setting Psalm 90 (91). The title comes from one of the final stanzas of the psalm, which give the core message of the whole, that of God's steadfast care for those who trust in him: "Since he clings to me in love, I will free him/Protect him, for he knows my name".

The bride and groom also wanted us to sing Durufle's Ubi Caritas, so I wrote my piece in order for it to lead right into the Durufle which you can hear at the end of this recording.

Since He Clings To Me

A song arrangement I did for a wedding of some friends of mine, sung by my dad, my brother and me.

Music and lyrics by Frank Gallian, based on Exodus 15

Words:
The Lord is my strength and my song
And he is become my salvation, he is my God

And I shall prepare him my heart

The Lord, he shall reign forever and ever, Amen

Exodus XV

A piece I wrote for a wedding in Easter, performed by Luke Mather's wonderful choir Icosa in Manchester this October. It runs into and pairs with Durufle's Ubi Caritas.

Text (Psalm 90, Grail Translation)
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
and abides in the shade of the Almighty
says to the Lord: "My refuge,
my stronghold, my God in whom I trust!"

It is he who will free you from the snare
of the fowler who seeks to destroy you;
he will conceal you with his pinions
and under his wings you will find refuge

You will not fear the terror of the night
nor the arrow that flies by day,
nor the plague that prowls in the darkness
nor the scourge that lays waste at noon

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand fall at your right,
you, it will never approach;
his faithfulness is buckler and shield.

your eyes have only to look
to see how the wicked are repaid,
you who have said: "Lord, my refuge!"
and have made the Most High your dwelling.

Upon you no evil shall fall,
no plague approach where you dwell.
For you had he commanded his angels,
to keep you in all your ways.

They shall bear you upon their hands
lest you strike your foot against a stone.
On the lion and the viper you will tread
and trample the young lion and the dragon.

Since he clings to me in love, I will free him;
protect him for he knows my name.
when he calls I shall answer: "I am with you."
I will save him in distress and give him glory.

With length of life I will content him;
I will let him see my saving power.


Since He Clings to Me/Ubi Caritas

A scene from my opera A Good Man is Hard to find. Watch the first production here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VndLMLqRg0

Photo from the archive of the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

"We've Had An Accident!" - from A Good Man is Hard to Find

A scene from my opera A Good Man is Hard to find. Watch the first production here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VndLMLqRg0

Photo from the archive of the DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.

"I Forget What I Done" - from A Good Man is Hard to Find

"Why, You're One Of My Babies" - from A Good Man is Hard to Find

A men's voices motet written for the Patronal Festival of the Church of St Mary and St Ethelburga, Barking. Sung by Graduale, directed by Jonathan Schranz.

Text:
Gehyr nu, min dohtor, geseoh, and onhyld þin eare, and alæt þæt hus þine fæder, for þam se cyncg wilnað þines wlites.
[Hear, O daughter, consider, and incline your ear, and renounce your father's house, and the king will desire your beauty.]
Pro patribus tuis erunt filii tibi/pones eos principes in universa terra
[Instead of your fathers shall be your sons/You will make them princes in all the earth]

Programme note: 
Psalm 44 (45) is an epithalamium or wedding song, exhorting a daughter to leave her father's hosue to marry the king. Although it speaks obviously of earthly marriage, it is set for the liturgy of a virgin, inviting the spiritual or allegorical interpretation of renouncing an earthly bridegroom for a divine one. Saint Ethelburga, foundress and prioress of the monastery in Barking, would have chanted this psalm regularly in Latin, but would not have seen the translation of the Psalms into her mother tongue, Old English, attributed to King Alfred, born two hundred years after her death. Nonetheless, in commemorating her, I thought it might be fitting to set verses 10 and 16 of the psalm in her mother tongue as well as her language of prayer.

Gehyr Nu

25y/o composer and singer based in London. I mostly write for choirs, but hope to someday discover how instruments work.

Stephen Bick