Cecilia McDowall The Ice is Listening vocal score

Contents Composer’s

Contents Composer’s note Texts iv v 1. Solid Waters 1 2. The ice is listening 22 3. Moulin 32 for online perusal only Duration: 16 minutes Instrumentation oboe percussion—1 player (glockenspiel, suspended cymbal) harp strings Full scores and instrumental parts are available on hire/rental. If required, the work may also be accompanied by piano, playing from the vocal score.

Composer’s note Finding that good starting point for any commission is an exciting process and Henley Choral Society’s suggestion of creating a cantata about the River Thames provided a wonderful way in to a rich reservoir of ideas. My thoughts turned to ice. We live in times when ice is increasingly under threat, causing sea levels to rise and rivers to surge. I thought of times past, when frost fairs were not uncommon, occurring intermittently up to 1814. And then my thoughts turned to the future, and how scarce it seems ice might become. Kate Wakeling has created a rich text for this work. Her poetry conveys the colour and vibrancy of the frost fairs on the Thames alongside a deep insight into how the ice is shifting and diminishing; her text shows us how things once were, how they are now, and how they might be. This is not a cantata about ‘winter’; rather, it is a cantata for all time, a reminder that ice is a precious resource, something to treasure. for online perusal only Of the first movement, ‘Solid Waters’, Kate writes: The text is drawn from a wonderful seventeenth-century manuscript that I found in the Old Library of Magdalen College, Oxford. Written by an anonymous source, An Historical Account of the Late Great Frost (1684) describes in marvellous detail the Frost Fair of 1683–4, when the Thames froze solid and all manner of ‘Roasting, Boyling, Eating, Drinking [and] Rejoycing’ took place on its surface. The movement opens with great activity as ‘people began to walk upon the ice’ and repeated patterns on ‘weather’ represent chattering teeth. This spirited, vivacious mood is countered by more thoughtful moments; away from the clamour and bustle on the ice there is another world—one of quietness, cold, and hunger. I feel the second movement will bring an air of regret and loss; it is a lament for the ice we have now but, one day, we may have no more. Kate writes: The text for this movement, ‘The ice is listening’, takes as its starting point a quote from the climate scientist Josh Willis—‘When the ocean speaks, the Greenland Ice Sheet listens’—and explores the impending loss of this ice sheet, paying close attention to the extraordinary amount of ‘history’ locked in the deepest ice here that will so swiftly vanish into air. The choir is joined by a soprano soloist singing of the ice which ‘has borne time without complaint’. But now water challenges the integrity of ice which ‘is pressed at last to speak’. The chorus supports the soloist, perhaps in the fashion of a Greek chorus commenting on the unfolding of a tragedy. Of the text in the third movement, Kate writes: ‘Moulin’ expresses something of the dynamism of these strange, magnificent waterfalls within the ice, and seeks to conjure up both their beauty and the threat they pose. This movement presses on relentlessly, rather in the manner of a perpetuum mobile. Kate’s poetry brings colour to this icy propulsion and I have made play with the words ‘dizzy’ and ‘dazzle’ as if they fall downwards into a watery chasm or ‘moulin’ below. Often there is an expectation that a work of this kind might bring a note of optimism in its final moments but I feel we face such an uncertain future that it seems more in keeping to offer something quieter, more contemplative, perhaps even a little unsettling. This note may be reproduced as required for programme notes. iv