Bob Chilcott Songbook: 9 Songs For Mixed Voices

Description: This work is suitable for SATB choir, unaccompanied and with piano. It includes nine classic Chilcott songs including original pieces and arrangements of traditional material. The varied nature of the collection highlights Chilcott's prodigious gifts. Some of the pieces are published here for the first time. Orchestral arrangements for 'Ar Hyd y Nos' (fl, ob, hn, hp, str), 'O Danny boy' (2.2.2.2-2.0.0.0-hp-str), and 'The Skye Boat Song' (2.2.2.2-0.0.3.1-hp-str) are available on hire. Review: The idiom [of 'The Lily and the Rose'] is gentle, restrained and melancholy without being remote, the harmonies warm and plangent without being cloying, the rhythms crisp and often (deliberately) repetitive, the form clean, clear, and concise, the whole well and sensitively conceived for the forces for which it was written, in this case a youth choir... There is originality [in 'The Runner'] in the rhythmic huffings and pantings of the voices that underlay the canonic interplay of the sung parts, and real drive in the latter stages as Whitman's text is abandoned and the wordless, jagged rhythms articulated earlier in the piece take over and are developed into a climactic, jazzy, angular, multi-layered harmony. Matthew Greenall, The Singer, June 07 All these pieces are available separately, but this is a worthwhile investment; apart from anything, the pieces are well crafted and fun to sing, and you may find some new Chilcott gems here you otherwise may have missed. Jonathan Wikeley, Music Teacher Sept 07 Table of Contents: Aka-Tonbo; Ar Hyd y Nos; Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802; Dance in the Street; O Danny boy; Over the Wave; The Lily and the Rose; The Runner; The Skye Boat Song