THREE SONGS OF TIME AND PLACE
THREE SONGS OF TIME AND PLACE
Songs from Piddinghoe by CHRISTOPHER MOORE (1997 - )
Forces | Mixed voices in up to three parts
Duration | up to 10’
Difficulty | Easy
About the piece
The timeless English village of Piddinghoe sits in the south of the country where the River Ouse widens and flows into the English Channel. There has been a church there since the 12th century; the people of Piddinghoe are proud of their heritage and in 2023 celebrations were held for the installation of a new set of bells for the church tower. On being asked to write a piece to mark the occasion my first thought was to think about everything, both momentous and mundane that those walls had witnessed over the years. We are fortunate to be custodians of such history and I wanted to find ways to celebrate it in song, but also provide a means to look at how Piddinghoe, and indeed any community, changes over time. The resulting work was a 40 minute song cycle based largely on the words of the villagers themselves, as dictated in oral histories. The performance in July comprised professional musicians, local schoolchildren and the stellar Tide Mills Community Choir, who take their name from another village nearby that was taken over for military purposes in the Second World War and subsequently left to decay and disappear. Tide Mills’ three songs act as a contrasting emotional commentary on the other movements of the song cycle, vocalising the broader questions that are thrown up by an examination of our past - questions of place, identity, balancing tradition with change, community and a sense of home. In particular the final song Time is a reminder that just as important as the built environment is the cultural environment we build for ourselves with songs and stories, and how vital it is to keep these alive.
While these three songs were conceived as part of a work that celebrated one specific place, I believe that the themes they explore are relevant to all places and communities, so I hope that other choirs may enjoy singing them and especially that they might be useful in educational settings. They were written very much in collaboration with the singers of Tide Mills Community Choir - I thank them for their enthusiastic creativity and in particular pay tribute to their wonderful director, Ellen Muriel.
Christopher Moore, July 2024
Performance note
These songs are designed to be accessible to choirs at any level and so the scores should be seen more as templates rather than strict instructions. There are three parts, loosely categorised as high, medium and low voices, but these are obviously not strict delineations and indeed the songs will work with parts omitted if necessary.
Below are some structural ideas, reflecting what was done in the first performance. Please use these as a basis for experimentation!
1. Written in a more traditional “hymn” style and could be sung straight through as written, repeating the first verse at the end in harmony.
2. Begin with all humming the melody (middle part), then vv. 1 and 2 with half the choir singing middle and half singing low. Descant (high part) added by a few voices in v. 3, before rousing final verse in 3 part harmony
3. Begin by repeating the verse, building up parts in order middle, low, high. Then sing chorus. One more verse with all parts and then a final chorus. A good idea for expanding this song would be to use body percussion/sounds/instruments to provide a rhythmic groove and paint the ticking of time.