I would be lying if I claimed that the Covid lockdown isn't having a strange effect on me. How strange, you ask? After all due consideration, I created this meme ...
© Colin Eatock 2021
© Colin Eatock 2021
 I used to work for an opera company, and one of my duties was writing synopses for operas. I enjoyed it, and I soon warmed to the glorious stylistic traditions of opera synopses. Where else, but in an opera synopsis, do you find words like “lascivious,” “impugns” or “absconds”? And thanks to my years of experience, the following synopsis for a yet-to-be composed opera pretty much wrote itself:
Don Trumpo, ossia il tiranno arancione – an opera in three acts.  Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872 - 1906) “Invitation to Love” is the first of my Three American Poems About Love (2020). The text, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, is as much a glowing reflection on the nature of love itself as it is an expression of love directed towards a specific other. Dunbar was born in Kentucky, the son of freed slaves. He achieved national and international fame as a poet, an essayist and a novelist, writing both in standard English and in African-American dialect. “Invitation to Love” is performed here by members of the UK-based Sonoro chamber choir. © Colin Eatock 2020  It is widely accepted by scholars that the Psalms were written to be sung. And over the centuries, composers have responded to this implicit challenge, finding in them a rich source of inspiration. This setting of Psalm 146 is the finale to my set of Three Psalms (2018). The excellent virtual video below was recorded by the Sonos Quartet. © Colin Eatock 2020  Hildegard in an inspired moment. Bit of a back-story here. In the carefree days of 2019 I composed music for one of Hildegard von Bingen's mystical poems, "O magna res." I did this for a Toronto-based women's vocal sextet called the Schola Magdalena. This group was to have performed the setting in a concert in April 2020 -- but of course that didn't happen. Then, a couple of months ago, I discovered a New York-based countertenor named Phillip Cheah, who produces a series of home-made videos called "Quire of Cheahs." I asked him if he would like to make a video in which he sang all six parts in "O magna res" himself. He did, and this fine little video is the result. © Colin Eatock 2020  Sara Teasdale (1884-1933) Sara Teasdale’s poetry is personal, subjective and often often confessional in tone, and frequently explores such issues as love, beauty and death. Spring Night is no exception: here, she contemplates natural beauty – admiring it, while also reflecting that she finds it no antidote for the sadness that love can bring. My setting of Spring Night is performed here by a vocal quartet from Pro Coro Canada, Michael Zaugg conducting. © Colin Eatock 2020  The changes begin. My piece for cello and piano entitled Canterbury is based on a four-bell change-ringing pattern of the same name. Four “bells” (represented by four piano chords) are presented in all possible groupings – while the cello plays long, lyrical phrases that rise to a high C and descend to the instrument’s lower range. It is performed in this video by two Montreal-based musicians: cellist Dominique Beauséjour-Ostiguy and pianist Marie-Pier Allard. © Colin Eatock 2020  Amy Lowell. Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was born into a prosperous Massachusetts family. A poet, critic and biographer, she was a leading exponent of the imagist movement, and was for a time closely allied with Ezra Pound. Her obituary stated, "She was upon the surface of things a Lowell, a New Englander and a spinster. But inside, everything was molten like the core of the earth.” In 1926, she was posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Some of Lowell’s poetry was written for or about the actress Ada Dwyer Russell, with whom Lowell shared a “Boston marriage” (a 19th-century euphemism for a lesbian relationship) for more than a decade. I have chosen three of Lowell’s love poems – Absence, Vintage and The Giver of Stars – for this set of choral songs. All three are concise and emotionally intense; vivid yet elegant in their imagery. And I am pleased to present this “virtual video,” created (in this time of Covid-19 lockdown) by members of Seattle’s Byrd Ensemble. © Colin Eatock 2020  Jenny Lind Island: 68°43′N 101°58′W. Some great musicians have had statues erected in their honour. Some have concert halls and music conservatories named after them. Still others are memorialized on postage stamps and in street-names. But how many can lay claim to an island in the Canadian Arctic?
According to the good folks at Wikipedia, Jenny Lind Island is “a small island 420 km2 (160 sq mi) in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, Canada. The island is located in the Queen Maud Gulf, about 120 km (75 mi) southeast of Cambridge Bay.”  No skiing for me in Banff this winter! Pride is a tricky business: you want to get it just right.
If a person has too much pride, that is not a good thing. Such a person is often seen as arrogant and boastful. Also, too much pride can lead one to overestimate one’s ideas, abilities and accomplishments. There are plenty of cautionary stories about people whose pride was excessive. Icarus had too much pride, and things didn’t end well for him. “Pride goeth before destruction,” the Bible tells us. |
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