COMMON SILENCE
Poet: Linda Studley
TITLE: Common Silence
INSTRUMENTATION: SA+divisi/TB+divisi/SATB a cappella*
TIME: 3m30s
$/COPY: $2.00 CAD (+tx where applicable)
SAMPLE: TB: click here
SA & SATB are available through HAL LEONARD ONLY
TEXT
In common silence
Is often found rare answers
Shhh, listen closely.
The heartbeat you feel
May emanate from the world
Not just your own chest.
The combined power
Of every dream dreamed is found
In common silence.
Traduction de courtoisie:
Aya est la voix du matin
Lorsque se lève le soleil;
Arrive Obee, voix du midi,
Chaude, et lente; et bientôt,
Soupire la voix du soir, Ohh,
guidant la journée à sa fin.
Diya, voix de la nuit
Chuchotent, bavardent, grimpent, crient !
Et sur toute la mer, elle chante
De la lumière, de l'amour et des êtres vivants.
PRORGAM NOTES
During the pandemic, a team of Canadian conductors and composers wondered how to gather the choral community together through creation. Sonic Timelapse offered a space for conductors and choristers to reflect on how COVID-19 affected them as musicians, and a space for composers to take those reflections and create new works in reaction to those reflections.
As a composer, it’s impossible to read through all the submitted reflections without attaching one’s personal perspective to them. We are all in this together, after all. And that is what struck me the hardest as I read through them: despite the frustrations and anxieties towards being alone and being silenced or voiceless as musicians, we have come to realise that we are still learning, growing, and sharing together in our communities, with so much purpose and meaning. And that, I find, is something quite positive.
You can imagine how I was over the moon to find Linda Studley’s poem “Common Silence”. I’ve been setting Linda’s poetry to music for a couple of years now. Seeing she writes about daily struggles and joys, and seeing her body of work is quite extensive, it should not have been a surprise for me to find a text about what can be found in shared silence.
I hope that through the silence you experience that you, too, will find that we are all in this together, in a strange way, and that you can draw strength from that.
— www.sonictimelapse.com