The Turning Year - Geoff Allan

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"The Turning Year is a choral song cycle set to poems by Hilaire Belloc. The work is in 15 short movements lasting about 1 hour in total. Each month of the year has a movement with a wordless setting for humming choir and solo oboe for midsummer and the whole work is framed by settings of a Belloc poem "Most Holy Night". The work is set for SATB choir, SATB soloists accompanied by Flute, Oboe and Clarinet in Bflat doubling Bass Clarinet. The work was performed in part by Myllburne Camerata in 2008 conducted by the composer."

⌛ Period → Contemporary ◈ Genre / Form → Partsongs

♯ Key F minor

⁄ Time Signature 4/4

♬ Voicing → SATB

↕ Range F2 – F5

¶ Language → English

Measures 72

Texture mixed texture

Parts 7

Instruments Wind: Flute, Oboe, Clarinet in B flat doubling Bass Clarinet

Pages 138

CPDL # 23239

Editor Geoff Allan

Posted 2011-03-08

License CPDL License

♫Pitch Ranges

Sop Solo

F4 – F5

Sop

C4 – F5

Alto

B-3 – B-4

Tenor

F3 – G4

Bass

F2 – C4

Reh.

B-3 – F5

only

F2 – G4

¶Lyrics / Text

'''The Turning Year''' Words : Hilaire Belloc '''The Night''' Most Holy Night, that still dost keep The keys of all the doors of sleep, To me when my tired eyelids close Give thou repose. And let the far lament of them That chaunt the dead day’s requiem Make in my ears, who wakeful lie, Soft lullaby. Let them that guard the hornàed Moon By my bedside their memories croon. So shall I have new dreams and blest In my brief rest. Fold thy great wings about my face, Hide day-dawn from my resting-place, And cheat me with thy false delight, Most Holy Night. '''January''' It freezes- all across a soundless sky The birds go home. The governing dark's begun: The steadfast dark that waits not for a sun; The ultimate dark wherein the race shall die. Death, with his evil finger to his lip, Leers in at human windows, turning spy To learn the country where his rule shall lie When he assumes perpetual generalship. The undefeated enemy, the chill That shall benumb the voiceful earth at last, Is master of our moment, and has bound The viewless wind it-self. There is no sound. It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast. It freezes; and the graven twigs are still '''February''' The winter moon has such a quiet car That all the winter nights are dumb with rest. She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest, And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star. Because the nights are silent, do not wake: But there shall tremble through the general earth, And over you, a quickening and a birth. The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake. The latest born of all the days shall creep To kiss the tender eyelids of the year; And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep, And smile at the new world, and make it dear With living murmurs more than dreams are deep. Silence is dead, my Dawn; the morning's here '''March''' The north-cast wind has come from Norroway, Roaring he came above the white waves' tips! The foam of the loud sea was on his lips, And all his hair was salt with falling spra