Cædmon's Hymn*

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) and organ - Length: ca. 9'00"
Available through Subito Music - Please visit SMD to order.

Cædmon’s Hymn is the oldest English of known authorship.  It was written in the seventh century by the poet Cædmon, supposedly from divine inspiration. The tranlsation is by Burton Raffel  My setting of the text, for chorus and organ, begins with four members of the chorus speaking the opening line of the poem in Old English, the intention being to evoke the atmosphere of the time and place of the hymn’s creation.  The work was commissioned by and is dedicated to the South Bend (Indiana) Chamber Singers, Nancy Menk, Music Director, and organist David Eicher. 

Now sing the glory of God, the King of 
Heaven, our Father's power and His perfect
Labor, the world's conception, worked
In miracles as eternity's Lord made
The beginning. First the heavens were formed as a roof
For men, and then the holy Creator,
Eternal Lord and protector of souls,
Shaped our earth, prepared our home,
The almighty Master, our Prince, our God.

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The World Premiere of “Cædmon's Hymn” by South Bend Chamber Singers conducted by Nancy Menk.

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The Revenge of Hamish

for Mixed Chorus SATB, piano, violin and bodhran - Length: ca. 19'00"
Poem by Sidney Lanier

(first five stanzas)

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran
Down the hill-side and sifted along through the bracken and passed that way.

Then Nan got a-tremble at nostril; she was the daintiest doe;
In the print of her velvet flank on the velvet fern
She reared, and rounded her ears in turn.
Then the buck leapt up, and his head as a king's to a crown did go

Full high in the breeze, and he stood as if Death had the form of a deer;
And the two slim does long lazily stretching arose,
For their day-dream slowlier came to a close,
Till they woke and were still, breath-bound with waiting and wonder and fear.

Then Alan the huntsman sprang over the hillock, the hounds shot by,
The does and the ten-tined buck made a marvellous bound,
The hounds swept after with never a sound,
But Alan loud winded his horn in sign that the quarry was nigh.

For at dawn of that day proud Maclean of Lochbuy to the hunt had waxed wild,
And he cursed at old Alan till Alan fared off with the hounds
For to drive him the deer to the lower glen-grounds:
"I will kill a red deer," quoth Maclean, "in the sight of the wife and the child."

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Hail Lovely and Pure*

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) a cappella - Length: ca. 13' 
Available through Subito Music - Please visit SMD to order.

This short poem is from The Second Shepherd’s Play, an English mystery play written in the 15th century by The Wakefield Master of Northern England. Mystery (or miracle) plays were a form of medieval drama that represented Biblical subjects such as the Creation and the Last Judgment. My late brother David translated a fragment from the original Middle English and made a small calligraphic version of it which I discovered among his papers. The text consists of the first lines spoken by the shepherds when they enter the stable to celebrate the birth of Jesus, and my setting is for a cappella chorus.

Calligraphy and translation by David C. K. McClelland

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These Last Gifts

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) a cappella - Length: ca. 5'00"
Available through Subito Music - Please visit SMD to order.

By strangers’ coasts and waters, many days at sea,
   I came here for the rites of your unworlding,
Bringing for you, the dead, these last gifts of the living
   And my words—vain sounds for the man of dust.
      Alas, my brother,
You have been taken from me. You have been taken from me,
   By cold chance turned a shadow, and my pain.
Here are the foods of the old ceremony, appointed
   Long ago for the starvelings under earth:
Take them: your brother’s tears have made them wet; and take
   Into eternity my hail and my farewell.

Poem by Catullus; translation by Robert Fitzgerald

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Harmonium Chamber Singers conducted by Anne Matlack.

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A Wood

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) and Woodwind Quintet - Length: ca. 7'00"

(opening)

Some would distinguish nothing here but oaks,
Proud heads conversant with the power and glory
Of heaven’s rays or heaven’s thunderstrokes,
And adumbrators to the understory,
Where, in their shade, small trees of modest leanings
Contend for light and are content with gleanings.
And yet here’s dogwood: overshadowed, small,
But not inclined to droop and count its losses . . .

Poem by Richard Wilbur

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The Ballad of Don and Dan

for Mixed Chorus SATB, piano, electric guitar, electric bass and drums - Length: ca. 10'45"

Text by Ian Frazier
From news items, 1984-1985

The Ballad of Don and Dan is based on local news stories about a crime that occurred in western Montana in 1984. Writer Ian Frazier wrote the lyrics. Frazier was living in Montana at the time and had collected information about this crime with the intention of writing a magazine article. He ended up not writing it, and instead cast the fact he had assembled into free verse. 

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Wolf Moon

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B.) and piano - Length: ca. 3'30"
Poem by Mary Oliver 

(opening)

Now is the season
of hungry mice,
cold rabbits,
lean owls
hunkering with their lamp-eyes
in the leafless lanes 
in the needled dark;
now is the season
when the kittle fox
comes to town
in the blue valley
of early morning; 
now is the season 
of iron rivers, 
bloody crossings,
flaring winds,
birds frozen
in their tents of weeds,
their music spent
and blown like smoke
to the stone of the sky;
now is the season
of the hunter Death

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Collect Pond

Collect Pond - A Hymn to Bag Snagging

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) a cappella - Length: ca. 4'30"

Collect Pond is a hymn to the Bag Snagger and bag snagging. The Bag Snagger is a tool invented by Ian Frazier and Tim McClelland designed to take plastic bags and other detritus out of trees and other hard-to-reach places like waterways. William McClelland joined Ian and Tim for many years in the activity of bag snagging and founded a business, Bag Snaggers, Inc., which sold Bag Snagger to companies and individuals around the world for many years. The place referred to in the title,
Collect Pond, is now a small pocket park in downtown Manhattan (NYC) which the trio was able to keep bag free for many years.

There is plastic in the air and it catches in the hair
Of the trees that all around us grow.
And in sycamore and elm in the breezy upper realms
You will see it waving to and fro.

There has seldom been a blight that has suffered less a fight
Than the bags that no one seems to see.
Although cause for some to frown, there are none to take them down
So the answer must reside in you and me.

Chorus:
Let the bags be borne out of the trees;
Let the green leaves remain.
With no harm done by us and with little or no fuss
Let the bags be borne away.

When walking in a glade seeking peacefulness and shade
There is nothing better than to share
A maple’s place on earth and one’s thoughts for what it’s worth
And the tangled wads of plastic everywhere.

No! That last part must come out! We will purge the vagrant lout
With hook and pole of proper length.
We will banish from the scene all the polypropylene
Using no small measure of our strength.

Chorus

Words by Tim McClelland, Music by William McClelland

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Dark Clouds Bring Waters

or Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) a cappella - Length: ca. 3'00"

(opening)

Dark clouds bring waters, when the bright bring none.
Yea, dark or bright, if they their silver drops
Cause to descend, the earth, by yielding crops,
Gives praise to both, and carpeth not at either,
But treasures up the fruit they yield together;
Yea, so commixes both, that in her fruit
None can distinguish this from that . . .

Text by John Bunyan
from the Apology to "The Pilgrim's Progress"

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Five Sonnets for Men's Voices

for Men's Voices TTB - Length: ca. 9’30”

1. Oh, Think Not I am Faithful to a Vow! - Edna St. Vincent Millay
2. I Expect You from the North - John Berryman
3. Green, green and green again - Conrad Aiken
4. i have found what you are like - E.E. Cummings
5. June Light - Richard Wilbur

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Good Speaking — A Benediction Song

for Mixed Chorus (S.A.T.B) a cappella - Length: ca. 5'00"

(opening)

Since our time for sharing's finished and our meeting now is done,
Take yourself a thoughtful moment each to every one.
Though our gath'ring in is ended and the time has come to part,
Keep our being here together close within your heart.

Build a feeling warm within you, let it shine forth from your eye.
Live full with what is in you, leave your best as you pass by.
There is nothing but what is in us. What we are is all our gift.
Share yourself with joy and sadness ere no one is left.

Poem by Bill Meikle

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Song for the Rainy Season

for Mixed Chorus SATB and piano - Length: ca. 7’00”

Poem by Elizabeth Bishop

(opening)

Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.

In a dim age
of water  
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.

At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof 
he can count:

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In That Part of the Young Year

for Mixed Chorus SATB a capella - Length: ca. 3’00”

Text by Dante Alighieri from Canto XXIV of “The Inferno”
translation by Robert Pinksy

(opening)

In that part of the young year when the sun
Goes under Aquarius to rinse his beams,
And the long nights already begin to wane 

Toward half the day, and when the hoarfrost mimes
The image of her white sis-ter up-on the ground
But only a while, because her pen, it seems, 

Is not sharp long—a peasant who has found
That he is running short of fod-der might rise
And go outside and see the fields have turned 

To white, and slap his thigh, and back in the house
Pace grumbling here and there like some poor wretch
Who can’t see what to do;

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