SECULAR SATB Large Choral Works and Cycles

George Korson, Editor
University of Pennsylvania Press 1949

Appalachian Mining Songs Five Folksongs arranged for SATB or TTBB chorus with solo voices and piano and optional harmonica. View Notes and Lyrics.

     These songs were sung by 19^th and early 20^th century miners in the Appalachian Mountains of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky.  
     The songs originally appeared in Pennsylvania Songs and Legends edited by George Korson (1899-1967) and published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 1949.  Korson had collected the songs from the singers, miners and saloonkeepers who wrote and sang them. 
     The choral and vocal arrangements are dedicated to the memory of my father, William Trinkley (1890-1960), who began working in the coal mines of Pennsylvania when he was 9 years old.

Robert Fergusson

Auld Reikie for mixed chorus and piano.  Poems of Robert Fergusson (1750-1774) (11 min.)
Settings of the great Scottish poet as he observes life and death as well as love and humor in 18^th Century Edinburgh.
Duration: 10 minutes   
Premiere: The Gregg Smith Singers performed the original choral version, conducted by the composer at St. Peter’s Church at the Citicorp Center, NYC. The recording is by the legendary choral ensemble. 

Emily Grosholz: Four Choruses for SATB voices and piano or chamber ensembles.
Settings of poems by Penn State poet Emily Grosholz. They were included in Mountain Laurels: A Choral Symphony.  The recordings are all from the original settings. 
Download full score with notes and poems. 

Five Choral Dances for mixed chorus and piano. Poems by Peter Viereck (1916-2006). 
Premiere:  Penn State Concert Choir, Douglas Miller, conductor. October 31, 1992; New York City;  
November 14, 1992, Recital Hall at Penn State.
Peter Viereck, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, takes on T.S. Eliot and Joyce Kilmer in parodies of their most famous poems. He salutes the poetic qualities of all vegetables but especially the lowly potato.  The potato has never been treated so lavishly!  And lastly a beautiful warm love song. 
Read Peter Viereck’s poems. Download the full choral cycle score. 

Gary Snyder Songs  Four Choruses for SATB and SAB Voices and Piano. 
Poems by Gary Snyder.
Poet, writer and activist Gary Snyder was associated with the Beat poets and immersed himself in Zen Buddhism.  A leading voice of environmental concern, Snyder has written widely on ecology and the preservation of the natural world.  These choruses would be a fitting tribute on Earth Day or for any program honoring the earth and the environment. 
Read the poems. 

God Save Great Washington  Presidential Campaign Songs from 1786 to 1972.  14 minutes.
15 songs for SATB or TTBB voices with solo voices and piano with optional string bass and percussion.
Commission and Premiere: The Penn State Glee Club performed the medley at every election year Homecoming Concert – with a straw vote taken with the audience! The songs still reflect the passions, vitriole and humor that partisan politics and the candidates inspired – from the earliest, God Save Great Washington for the campaign of George Washington in 1792, to Nixon Now in 1972. Most of the campaign songs in this collection are drawn from Songs America Voted By, compiled and edited by Irwin Silber.
Download score. Listen to Penn State Glee Club. 

Herrick’s Lyricks  Cantata for Chorus, Four Solo Voices and Piano. Poems by Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
Commission and Premiere: Chesapeake Chorale Chamber Singers, Jesse Parker, conductor.  April, 2017. 
Herrick, the English poet and contemporary of Milton, was born in London and educated at Cambridge to become a minister. His poems are monuments of wit. The sophisticated poet wrote to his upper class readers praising the simplicities of country life and country wisdom. Two of his most famous poems, To the Virgins, to make much of Time and To Daffadills, are major works of the carpe diem (seize the day) tradition which enjoins us to enjoy the moment as it happens. The over-riding message of Herrick’s work is that life is short, the world is beautiful, love is splendid, and we must use the short time we have to make the most of it. 
Read the poems.  Download the score.  The most popular poems may also be viewed separately.
Click on the titles to listen to the Chesapeake Chorale. 

Robert Herrick window in Westminster Abbey

knots: a 20^th Century Madrigal Psycle  for three-part chorus or three solo voices and optional instruments 
Texts by R.D. Laing (1927-1989).  
Commission and premiere: Contemporary Dance Company, Patricia Heigel (1935-2009), choreographer.
Shirley Donovan, soprano; Cathy Ufema, mezzo-soprano; Douglas Smith, baritone. 
When knots was published, it quickly became a cultural and literary sensation.  The paperback blurb: “A series of dialogue-scenarios, which can be read as poems or plays, describing the "knots" and impasses in various kinds of human relationships.”  The titles tell all.
Download score.  Click on titles to listen to midi. 

Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery  Seven Choruses with soprano, tenor and baritone soloists, and piano or chamber ensemble (violin, viola, cello and piano).  Text by Jason Charnesky.  
This choral cycle is derived from the dramatic cantata entitled The Last Voyage of Captain Meriwether Lewis which imagines the thoughts and fears that befell Lewis during the last hours of his life. The cycle chronicles Lewis’ life on the Expedition, with songs of joy and accomplishment, adventure and danger, humor and discovery.  The Corps travels up the Missouri to discover “A New Eden”; the men describe meal time in “Mess Call”; York shares a tall tale; Lewis recounts a bear hunt; and Sacajawea sings a lullaby to her newborn. The last movement depicts the physical and psychic hardships brought on by the arduous and dangerous journey across the forbidding Bitterroot Mountains; and then the joy of discovering at the mouth of the Columbia River their goal: the Pacific Ocean. 
To listen to the SATB scores on midi, contact the composer. 
Download full score or view the individual choruses below.   The recordings are of the Men’s Chorus versions sung by the Penn State Glee Club. 

The Library  Five Choruses for SATB Voices Unaccompanied. 
Texts from the Rotunda of the Chicago Public Library.  
During a composer residency in 2010 at the historic Ragdale Foundation, an artist colony in Evanston, Illinois, I visited the magnificent architectural landmark of the Chicago Public Library in the Loop. I was captivated by the quotes from famous writers in the Rotunda and lingered there to write them down - and that became my project for the Ragdale residency.
These choruses are dedicated to lovers of libraries and literature, and readers of all ages. 
Download the text and full score.  

Mennonite Songs  Cantata for SATB Chorus, Solo Voices and Piano.  Poems by Julia Spicher Kasdorf.
Premiere: Goshen College Chamber Choir, Scott Hochstetler, conductor.  November 17, 2017
Duration: ca. 27 minutes
Download the complete score and lyrics.
View the premiere performance with Julia and Bruce’s commentaries. 
Julia Kasdorf ‘s evocative poems from her collections The Sleeping Preacher and Poetry in America describe her memories of growing up in Mennonite communities in Big Valley, PA. I wrote the songs hoping they would be sung by young people – high school or college age – and that they would learn about the culture of the Mennonites, whether they were of Mennonite ancestry or not. After the premiere at Goshen, I was touched to learn that one of the singers now had a greater understanding of the lives of his grandparents from experiencing these songs.

One Life: The Rachel Carson Project  Cantata for SATB Chorus, Solo Voices and Piano, withoptional Flute, Horn and Violoncello. The work may also be performed with Narrator.  
Text by Jason Charnesky, based on the life and writings of Rachel Carson (1907-1964).
The original cantata was scored for women’s voices and has been adapted for mixed voices. The audio clips below are performed by the Oriana Singers, Discantus and two soloists: Elisa Matthews, soprano, and Jan Mianulli, mezzo-soprano.
Download narrator’s script and lyrics. Download piano-vocal score.  Individual movements may be viewed or listened to below. 

Open House: Roethke Cantata For SATB Chorus, Soprano and Tenor Soloists and Piano or Chamber Orchestra. 
Poems by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963).
The cantata pulls together the various settings of poems by Roethke that were composed for Mountain Laurels: A Choral Symphony written for the Centenary of State College, PA. The scores are of the voice and piano versions, but the recordings are all from Mountain Laurels.  When I began research as part of my 1993-1994 sabbatical leave project, I intended to write a small piece after the manner of Frostiana which Randall Thompson wrote to poems by Robert Frost - to celebrate the 200^th Anniversary of Amherst, MA.  I ended up with several dozen poems by 17 poets. But Roethke took top honors, with 10 poems.  So here is what should have been an abbreviated Mountain Laurels. The poems show Roethke’s virtuosity as a writer - his sense of humor, his lyricism and nostalgia, and finally, in The Summons his moral compass.  In this, his Phi Beta Kappa commissioned poem, he looks at Europe in 1939 and summons all people to take action.
All audio clips are from the original performances in Mountain Laurels. 
Download complete score.  Individual movements may be viewed or listened to below. 

Spoon River Triptych  Three choruses from Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950) for mixed chorus, soloists and  piano. 
Premiere: Columbia University Glee Club.  Low Library, May 1968.
Spoon River Anthology was published in 1916 and made an immediate impact: Readers had never before seen poems like these free verse epitaphs, each spoken by the ghost of a departed citizen of Spoon River, Illinois. The epitaphs reveal the secret lives of these rural and small town Americans, at times tragic, at time humorous, but all captivating to the reader. 
Read the notes and poems.

Constantine Cavafy
(1863-1933)

Voices for SATB chorus, soloists and piano.  Also available for SSAA or TTBB chorus. YR 4902v2
Poems by Constantine Cavafy (1863-1933), the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20^th century. The poems chronicle his life and clandestine loves in Istanbul and Alexandria in the early years of the century.  His powerful poem Expecting the Barbarians chronicles fears and rumors in an ancient city, but can also apply to the threat of invasion and war in modern times.