In the previous post, https://hiltonkeanjones.com/2014/08/23/new-anthem/, I had a link to the first of a series of choral pieces based on Transcendentalist poets. The two transcendentalists everyone knows are, of course, Emerson and Thoreau, but there are many more than just those two, and a surprising number of them are women. More than half of the poems I’ve selected are by these women transcendentalists.
The text of the first choral piece in the series, the one featured last week, is by a famous male poet, Longfellow. A friend asked if I was going to post a demo of the choral piece. I didn’t really want to do that–I think choral piece demos sound particularly cheesy (not that other things don’t). What I have done, however–and I intend to do this for every one of the choral pieces–is I reworked them, texturally, into orchestral pieces.
The group of pieces will be called Transcendentalists, and for the orchestral versions, instead of the poem’s titles, I’m using the authors’ names as titles. So, if you want to follow along with some notes, look at last week’s post. Eventually, I’ll post the orchestral score and edit this post to give a link for it.
Here’s the SoundCloud link for Longfellow.
Hilton Kean Jones 