January 27, 2017

  • Choral Music by Scott Perkins

     

    The Stolen Child: Choral Works of Scott Perkins
    Audivi/Scott Perkins
    Navona Records 6067
    Total Time:  49:30
    Recording:   ****/****
    Performance: ****/****

    Three modern choral works by Scott Perkins appear on this Navona release.  Performances here are by the Detroit-based group Auvidi.  The recording here though, made last summer, finds them in  New Haven, Connecticut.  The composer conducts this program exploring themes of the loss of innocence inspired by the poetry of Yeats, Whitman, Auden, and de la Mare.

    The Stolen Child (2006) is a six-movement work based on the poetry of William Butler Yeats.  These are framed with a prologue and epilogue with a sense of magic as a mysterious being calls out to the child to come away from the real world.  The inner texts explore the life cycle as well as the idea of “love” from different life stages.  The music here connects more to a modal underpinning with a quality that hearkens back to ancient music with its more open-sounding qualities.  Pedal points and open quartal harmonies help lend some of this atmosphere with a rather haunting quality.  The harmony itself will shift about more to create dissonance and most interesting are the many solo lines that are tossed about the ensemble.  The movement from dissonant choral clusters outward create an equally fascinating quality.

    The central work on the album, A World Out of the Sea (2003), has themes of death and transformation.  Walt Whitman’s “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” serves as the basis for this five-movement work.  The style here continues like that of the previous work.  Though here there are some exploration of contemporary techniques and sounds one can create with the voice—most audible in the fascinating “Demon or Bird!”.

    Finally, we enter another magical world in The World of Dream (2016).  Here, sleep becomes the method to enter into the dreamworlds inspired here by the poetry of W.H. Auden and Walter de la Mare.  The music here continues along the lines of that heard earlier with more fascinating cadential moments and careful layering of harmonies.

    These pieces each on their own are interesting works in what is a relatively subdued choral album.  The music falls along the lines of Lauridsen with touches of ancient music.  The lines are quite stunning at times and Perkins certainly has been fortunate to have these singers at his disposal.