A recent performance that I found on YouTube reminded me that a few years ago I was commissioned by the Childrens’ Chorus of Greater Dallas (now called the Greater Dallas Choral Society for Children and Youth) to write two short songs for them. The organisation has a number of different children’s choirs, of different ages, and a large programme of concerts and courses with a range of directors and in different venues – and my pieces were to be aimed at the youngest children, aged around 7 to 10. Once a year they have a big concert in the prestigious Meyerson Symphony Centre in Dallas, Texas, involving all the choirs, and these are really spectacular occasions, with beautiful and vibrant singing from a succession of well-turned-out young voices. My songs were premiered in the 2019 concert, at which I was delighted to be present (and to explore Dallas for a few days!).
One of the challenges of concert choral writing is, of course, finding suitable words. For the performer and the listener the words are just as important as the tune, if not more so, and when writing for young people the difficulty multiplies as an older composer like me tries to get onto an appropriate wavelength. I find the best approach is to seek out something a bit ‘magic’, a bit ‘mysterious’ a bit ‘other-worldy’ and not to attempt to be ‘up-to-date’…
So for this song I went to a distant past, and to a distant country (for young Texans) – the Scottish islands, choosing for my text two adapted sections from traditional Hebridean poems as collected by Alexander Carmichael in the late nineteenth century. Here are the words:
I am turning my eyes to the sky,
I am lifting my eyes to the stars,
I am raising my eyes to you, bright new moon.
As you shine in the starry night,
As you lighten the darkened world,
As you radiate calm and peace, bright new moon.
Be your light above for all of those in need,
Be your guidance below for voyagers to heed;
Be your lustre bright for each and every one,
Be your course complete when morning’s light is come.
(repeat first six lines)
For the first six lines I wrote a twisting and turning melody in which each line starts low, and rises and falls – then in the more impassioned middle section (the last four lines) each phrase starts on the highest note and slowly descends. A few mysterious piano chords then lead into a repetition of the first section, later with an optional descant of more sustained notes. So the structure and ideas are, I hope, suitable and memorable for a young choir, and the range of the melody is just one octave.
The music is published by Oxford University Press.
Here is a recording of the first performance, in Dallas, 2019
Here is a recording of a subsequent performance by the Scunthorpe Co-operative Junior Choir – one of the few children’s choirs in the UK that has a training programme comparable to the large American ones.
And here is the Greater Dallas Choral Society’s 2025 performance. I was really pleased that the choir revived it, with a whole new set of young voices!