- Elizabeth Maconchy
And Death Shall Have No Dominion (1969)
- Chester Music Ltd (World)
Commissioned by Birmingham Brass for the Three Choirs Festival
- 2hn.3tpt.3tbn
- SATB
- 12 min
- Dylan Thomas
- English
Programme Note
The theme of this great poem is explicit in the line which begins and ends each of its three verses, so framing the whole poem: for behind the images of death and terror of the sea there is a sense of hope - “Though lovers be lost love shall not….Split all ends up they shan’t crack…. And Death shall have no dominion.”
In setting this poem for voices and eight brass I have had in mind the high spaces of a cathedral, writing music whose reverberations are intended to hang in the air. I have aimed to keep the textures transparent, and the music is mainly slow moving, but the declamatory passages for the brass build up an exciting structure of sound.
© Elizabeth Maconchy
In setting this poem for voices and eight brass I have had in mind the high spaces of a cathedral, writing music whose reverberations are intended to hang in the air. I have aimed to keep the textures transparent, and the music is mainly slow moving, but the declamatory passages for the brass build up an exciting structure of sound.
© Elizabeth Maconchy
Scores
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