Item Number: MN.CH-1341
Three Choirs of Women's voices. The poet, Laurence Binyon (1869 - 1943), the son of Quakers, was educated at St. Paul's School and Trinity College, Oxford. Although too old to enlist in WWI, he went to the Western Front in 1916 to work for the Red Cross as a medical orderly with an Ambulance Unit. Binyon is most famous for his poem For the Fallen often recited at Remembrance Sunday services in the UK, and an integral part of Anzac Day services in Australia and New Zealand, and November 11th Remembrance Day services in Canada. While there are other settings of this poem, notably by Edward Elgar, this setting utilizes the striking emotion of the WWI poetry juxtaposed with the names of the New York War Dead from the war waged by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The two solo quartets are frequently in different tonalities from each other as well as from the main body of singers and are to be spatially separated from the main choir. The entire piece, written between June 21 and July 15, 2008, is a plea for remembering those who have died. The list of names was picked from New York as the commission for this work was from Virginia Davidson, the founder and director of the prominent New York vocal group, The New York Treble Singers.
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