On Waking (Morning)
Browse Works
Instrumentation
Choir
1
Additional Information
This single-movement work for choir is a setting of the text 'Morning' by Rowan Sawday. It deals with the period between the end of a night's sleep (when dreams are at their most intense) and the moment of waking. The notion of focus is explored in a three-fold manner: firstly using the contrast between blurred textures and more lucid ones, drawing parallels between the dream-state and reality; secondly through the use of space, bringing the listener's attention to constantly-changing parts of the performance space; and thirdly through text, in gradually following the narrator's train of thought from abstract, dream-like imagery through to the more concrete realisations of the morning, his whereabouts, the time, the race for the train...
'On Waking (Morning)' was commissioned by MusArc through the Sound & Music 'Portfolio' Scheme, and is dedicated to my Grandpa, Douglas Ian Westwood.
'Morning' – Rowan Sawday (2013)
I grab for its tail as it vanished
A flash and the whale grows small
Beeping
Legs in the substance of dreaming
It is damp on my pillow
Cold is the air of the world
Hot is my cave I am flicker
Glimpse of a warm-headed marvel
Slug in the depth of a river
I am
Made of a mountain of shoes
Asleep for a parcel of time
My father but not my father
A red-footed runner on water
I run through a house full of rooms
My bed is a bunk at the top
My city's a dust-covered ruins
I stop at the window to watch
the wall coming
My bed in its frame
My arm is a pipe full of rocks
Sixteen minutes to get to the train
December
Clapton
11 o' clock