This week we started to rehearse the very beautiful Seal Lullaby by the well-known choral composer Eric Whitacre. It is one of the two pieces he has so far written for women’s voices only. In it, he gives a contemporary choral setting to the words of a Rudyard Kipling poem. At the end of rehearsal, for the fun of it, we finished with a loud and enthusiastic run through Jerusalem with words by William Blake.
It started me thinking about some of the other works the choir has sung recently where written works have been set to music. Immediately, the gorgeous and well known Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Faure and Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols came to mind. Then there is also Aaron Copland’s arrangement of the children’s song I Bought Me a Cat and Let it Go with words by Michael Leunig. The latter has become one of the choir’s favourites and is one of the pieces with which we finish our concerts.
Whatever we end up singing I inevitably walk out of rehearsals with a lighter heart and step. What magic! JS Cloud9 Choir member