On Death

This, my latest piece, is for Solo unaccompanied voice. I needed to write a vocal piece for part of my course at Birmingham Conservatoire, and since Mary Wiegold was going to be singing them, I thought I should make it a little more lyrical than some of my other pieces.

However, I wanted to make this piece a little different in presentation, more like my "Recycling" series (which I will post later).

My first inspiration was a poem by Keats: On Death. I recently saw a trailer for the upcoming film; Bright Star, which chronicles Keat's romance with sweetheart, Fanny (no sniggers please). I later saw the poem On Death on the internet somewhere which immediately became the inspiration for the vocal piece.

I thought that, to remain true to the style of the period, I should enclose this poem in a letter, something which I have done before.

Once I had the poem and the presentation style, the music came easily. Here are some photos of the finished score:



The back will later have a wax seal on it, as a finishing touch, similar to the one seen in the link above.



Here is the finished music. I added some corner illustrations for decoration. All I need now is to set the pencil with some hairspray.



UPDATE:

And the final seal:



(© Jason Dewey 2009)

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