NEW RELEASE:
“Bee! I’m expecting you!” for 2-part treble voices
You can buy this piece HERE.
I’m excited to release my first piece written for children’s choir! I love the medium, and I’ve been conducting choirs over the past year, so it was time for me to write for them. I wrote this for one of my choirs in spring, and we performed it at our concert in June. It’s set to a lively and descriptive (but concise) poem by Emily Dickinson, and I tried to reflect the attributes of the poem in my music.
In that spirit of conciseness (and learnability with very limited rehearsal time), I attempted to make a musically interesting piece using a fairly small amount of material. The very beginning of the piece is the most difficult section—a few bars worth of the two parts tossing a phrase back and forth holds plenty of rhythmic and part-independence challenges. The first verse is unison, consisting of two staccato phrases and two legato phrases. When it splits, one part takes the melody verbatim again, while the other develops the phrase from the intro, then sings harmony to the legato phrases. The last few lines of the piece are a variant of the legato phrases. So there’s really only three distinct “chunks” of material in the piece, and it makes it pretty simple to learn, despite the fact that some of the phrases have some less-than-simple changes in tonality within them!
I think this would be suitable for pretty much any upper-el or middle-school choir. The amount of rehearsal time it would take would depend on the skill level of the choir. The subject is most suitable for a springtime concert. Happy singing!
You can buy this piece (or request a perusal copy) HERE.
*****
Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying Yesterday
To Somebody you know
That you were due —
The Frogs got Home last Week —
Are settled, and at work —
Birds, mostly back —
The Clover warm and thick —
You'll get my Letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me —
Yours, Fly.