Instrumentation

piano (opt) - strings* * (student string parts for violins 1 & 2, viola and cello are also included. These are optional, and can be omitted if so desired)

Availability

Full score and parts for hire, vocal score on sale from Faber Music Store, or from the Hire Library

Programme Notes

Being a composer is about much more than creating attractive pictures in sound, or somehow adding to the canvas of our musical heritage. I believe that it is possible, indeed imperative, to harness the extraordinary power of music to heal and comfort, to allow a place for reflection and understanding, to reconcile and to nurture, and especially to articulate our collective or personal loss. For someone like me, who grew up in a community at a time in history mercifully protected from oppression, the unbearable suffering of others provokes a kind of stunned bewilderment, and I have witnessed many times how music is a way of giving voice to that emotional confusion. Unique amongst the arts, music has its own internal clock, transcending the ticking seconds, minutes, hours and days of conventional time. It is able – miraculously – to put us in any place at any time, suspending normality. The sound of a young person singing is the sound of inextinguishable hope.

Song of Hope, A

William Jewell College (Liberty, MO, USA)

Liberty Community Chorus/Bryan Taylor

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Song of Hope, A

St Mary's Church, Wimbledon (London, United Kingdom)

Willington School Chamber Choir/Christopher Wray

Song of Hope, A

Great Hall, Guildhall (London, United Kingdom)

Lady Margaret School/Aurora Orchestra/Howard Goodall