Birthday Sleep

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composer

Sir John Tavener (1944-2013)

author of text

Vernon Watkins (1906-1967)

Birthday Sleep, dating from 1999 and setting a text by the Welsh poet Vernon Watkins – viewed by Tavener as a meditation on the Incarnation – uses similar techniques, and also employs some unexpected harmonic shifts, so that the cadences are variously in G major, E major and B minor, and Watkins’s couplet of repeating lines at the end of each strophe is set in pure F major. The effect is as disconcerting as it is fresh.

Daté de l’an 1999, Birthday Sleep, qui met en musique un texte du poète gallois Vernon Watkins – une méditation sur l’Incarnation, aux yeux de Tavener –, use de techniques similaires, mais recourt aussi à des transitions harmoniques inattendues, en sorte que les cadences sont aussi bien en sol majeur qu’en mi majeur et en si mineur, et que le couplet de Watkins, fait de vers répétés à chaque fin de strophe, est sis dans un pur fa majeur. L’effet produit est aussi déconcertant que frais.

extrait des notes rédigées par Ivan Moody © 2004
Français: Hyperion Records Ltd

Das aus dem Jahre 1999 stammende und auf einem Text des walisischen Dichters Vernon Watkins beruhende Stück Birthday Sleep – das Tavener eine Meditation über die Menschwerdung betrachtet – bedient sich ähnlicher Techniken. Hier findet man auch unerwartete harmonische Wendungen, durch die Kadenzen abwechselnd in G-Dur, E-Dur und h-Moll schließen. Watkins’s Wiederholungen der letzten Zeile am Ende jeder Strophe stehen im reinen F-Dur. Die Wirkung ist gleichermaßen beunruhigend wie auch erfrischend.

aus dem Begleittext von Ivan Moody © 2004
Deutsch: Elke Hockings

Recordings

Tavener: Choral Music

Polyphony, Stephen Layton (conductor)

CDA67475

‘Polyphony fields 25 singers for this project and for this repertory, I think you've got about a good a choir as you could possibly get. Stephen Layto ...
‘The brilliant, white, celestial light Tavener so effectively evoked earlier in the decade had a chill core. Here—if you will bear with the synaesthes ...» More

Tavener: Choral Music

Polyphony, Stephen Layton (conductor)

This album is not yet available for downloadSACDA67475Super-Audio CD

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Details

Polyphony, Stephen Layton (conductor)

Track 1 on CDA67475 [6'22]

Track 1 on SACDA67475 [6'22] Super-Audio CD

Sleep, these ancient hours,
While the reapers thresh
Sleep, first of flowers,
Infant of this flesh:
The hills for you shall leap,
Winding rivers flash,
Jerusalem rejoice,
And the mountain-ash
Move above your sleep,
Move above your sleep.

Great the mystery stands
Over the dumb tree;
Gift of buried hands
Whom no eye can see
Yet the sages love,
Rest within her silk,
For the moving breast
Cannot give you milk
Till you hear the dove,
Till you hear the dove.

Then this giant weight,
Vessel of her womb,
Birth will dedicate
Falling through the loom
Near the reapers’ sound,
Heaven and Earth in dance
Moving, as the babe
Leapt with radiance
And our life was found,
And our life was found,
Where knees touched the ground,
Where knees touched the ground.

Vernon Watkins (1906-1967)

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Birthday Sleep

Introduction

Recordings

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