Sunset Poem

A member asked me the other evening why we don't sing "Sunset Poem". I smiled sweetly, made a few appropriately polite remarks about pressure of other repertoire and not being able to see where it would fit into the general run of our concert commitments - this is perfectly true.

However, underneath all of this there is a simple underlying reason why we don't do it.

I hate Sunset Poem.

I find it the most odious item that I can possibly ever be confronted with in a male choir programme. Why so? I hear you ask; How can a few short verses of "Under Milk Wood" set to a perfectly reasonable chant by Troyte be so offensive?

Well, this is because of the horrendous way that almost every choir I have heard sing it.

Regard the text....

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
on all poor creatures born to die.

And every evening at sun-down
I ask a blessing on the town,
for whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
who live our lives under Milk Wood,
and Thou, I know, wilt be the first
to see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us all this night, I pray,
and to the sun we all will bow
and say, good-bye - but just for now!

This text should be sung in speech rhythm - that means at the pace of good well-measured speech and in a similar shape. So this might mean for the first verse something like

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.

Compared to most performances that go something like

Every morning when I wake
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
on all poor creatures born to die

Hard to represent on the page but you must have regard to the meaning of the text and it is very poor form to accent the word “I” in tastefully performed Anglican chant!

Why have I just ranted about this – well I feel quite strongly that we don’t as a whole pay enough attention to the important things in the male choir world. We are very obsessed with showering the choirmaster with saliva on final “t’s” and accenting inappropriately the word contempt wherever it appears but singing with style and attention to the words and “painting a picture” seems to slip past most of us.

Let’s concentrate on

Performing each phrase appropriately by thinking about the meaning of the text.
Looking after each interval - making it just perfect.
Singing clean vowel sounds, unpolluted by affectation
Concentrating on the phrase at hand and by doing that remaining focussed on the moment, not worrying about that difficult phrase on page 12 (or whatever)

By doing those few things above we should think all the time about interpreting the music not just producing a collection of chords.

Oh, and as for Anglican Chant – this is fun!