Seven Songs of Spring

SATB with piano accompaniment

Cover art This collection was composed for the Vintage Voices of Granville community choir that I directed for nearly ten years. For our spring concert in 2018, I was on the hunt for classically oriented songs that were not necessarily sacred.

Don't get me wrong! I love sacred music.

But we typically performed a mix of sacred and secular pieces for our concerts. I wanted something fresh and new for the secular side, and I simply could not find the kind of thing I was looking for.

So I decided to write my own. This collection is the result of that decision.

1. When Spring Unlocks the Flowers (Aeolian)
Poem by Reginald Heber

2. Spring Is the Period (Ionian)
Poem by Emily Dickinson

3. Lines Written in Early Spring (Phrygian)
Poem by William Wordsworth

4. A Prayer in Spring (Mixolydian)
Poem by Robert Frost

5. The Spring Storm (Locrian)
Poem by William Carlos Williams

6. There Will Come Soft Rains (Dorian)
Poem by Sara Teasdale

7. Blossom Time (Lydian)
Poem by James P. Lukens

Score download:

Total presentation time is approximately 15 minutes

I started by finding several poems from the realm of classic poetry that were in the public domain. I wanted seven, but I could find only six that I wanted to use.

It was my wife who suggested the source for the seventh poem: I happened to be friends with a former Poet Laureate of the State of Ohio, one James P. Lukens, who was a member of my choir. My wife suggested that I ask him if he had anything that might work for this collection.

He did.

And he graciously granted me permission to use that poem for the final poem of this collection. What a blessing!

This collection is admittedly a challenging one, but one I hope that others will find as richly rewarding to perform as did the members of the Vintage Voices.

This collection also provided me as a composer with the opportunity to accept a challenge I had had under consideration for a number of years: that of composing a collection in which each piece was written in a different musical mode, one each for the seven classic modes in music. Those modes are listed as subtitles for the songs.

The entire collection was composed over a period of about two weeks in late 2017.

Unfortunately, we did not get a recording of the premiere performance (which was excellent!). So the demos presented here were rendered using the EastWest Quantum Leap Hollywood Choir sound library. The printed music was produced using Finale.

Tip: To best experience the demo, first load the PDF in another browser tab. Then start the playback of the recording and follow along in the PDF.

The music of Charles O. Beck

Seven Songs of Spring

SATB with piano accompaniment