| These three pieces were written during the pandemic. 2020 - 2021. |
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Chris Reynolds, May 2021 |
| For the times we live in ... a short requiem in memory of those lost.... | ||
As the numbers becoming ill, and the numbers dying rose at frightening rates, I wanted to mark the passing of those who were dying alone in oxygen tents, and cremated quickly with a minimum ceremony and a minimum of mourners. |
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| First Movement: | 'Requiem Aeternam' | for more detail, follow this link |
I started quite early in the lockdowns with the 'Requiem' I wanted something heavy and slow, with dense voicing. The piece repeats with the introduction of a second set of voices riffing against the initial chorale. |
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| Second Movement: | 'Short Order' | for more detail, follow this link |
'Short order' was the last piece to come together. I wanted a complex layer of images in the lyrics, which brought in elements of the battlefields of WW1, and the military instruction ' short order'seemed to encapsulate the hurry and lack of dignity and compassion that these events demanded. I wanted to use the images of the requiem mass, and I chose the green chasuble ( for ordinary days,) to mark the commonplaceness of these tens of thousands of funerals. I was writing this in the spring of 2021, which was particularly abundant in wildflowers ... not poppies this time but the white, yellow and golds of mid spring. These flowers became for me the tributes for those who had died from this pernicious virus. |
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| Third Movement: | 'The Souls of the righteous' | for more detail, follow this link |
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