PGSO Travels to 100 Mile House With a New Composition

Simon Cole is the composer of One Song Universus

This concert is part of a project called “A Northern Quest” which originated from an idea that Simon Cole had to compose a new piece of music.  This new piece, which will be heard for the first time at this concert, is a song set in northern Canada, relevant to all cultures, but particularly to the First Nations community.  Themes in the story include beauty, grandeur, the balance of nature and interconnectedness of all things.  The piece tells a story of a land where all things are bound together in harmony by a single musical thread.  As time passes, the people forget about the thread and everything begins to unravel.  When they realize what has happened they begin to search for the thread (song), but can no long hear it. They search for the song, overcoming a series of obstacles.  In the end, they discover that the source of the song is inside them, and they come to understand that to hear the song in the world, it must be heard first inside. 

The song is narrated and sung by a soprano.  Simon Cole wrote the piece with Marion Newman in mind.  Ms. Newman is a sought-after First Nations soprano originally from Bella Coola.  Ms. Newman is excited to be part of this project and excited to perform this piece in her home province.

As part of “A Northern Quest” project, this piece will be performed as part of a main stage concert in Prince George and throughout communities in northern BC.

The Siegfried Idyll, one of Richard Wagner’s few non-operatic works, is a symphonic poem lasting approximately twenty minutes for chamber orchestra. Wagner composed it as a birthday present to his second wife, Cosima, after the birth of their son Siegfried in 1869. It was first performed on the morning of Christmas Eve (Cosima’s birthday) in 1870 by a small ensemble on the stairs of their villa at Tribschen (today part of Lucerne) in the Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland; Cosima awoke to its opening melody. Today, it is often performed by orchestras.

Its original title was Triebschen Idyll with Fidi’s birdsong and the orange sunrise. "Fidi" was the pet version of the name Siegfried. It is thought that the birdsong and the sunrise refer to incidents of personal significance to the couple.

Wagner’s opera Siegfried, which was not premiered until 1876, incorporates music from the Idyll. It was once thought that the Idyll simply used musical ideas intended for the opera, but it is now known that the opposite is the case. Wagner adapted melodic material for the Idyll from an unfinished chamber piece and later incorporated it into the love scene between Siegfried and Brunhilde in the opera, somewhat disrupting the melodic and motivic unity of the larger work.

The work also uses a German lullaby, whose title can be translated "Sleep, Baby, Sleep." Wagner published a detailed program for the work which describes his mother singing the boy asleep with a lullaby and then contemplating what he will be like as a young man.

Around the 15th century, a tradition of secular (non-liturgical) Jewish music was developed by musicians called kleyzmorim or kleyzmerim by Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe. They draw on devotional traditions extending back into Biblical times, and their musical legacy of klezmer continues to evolve today. The repertoire is largely dance songs for weddings and other celebrations. They are typically in Yiddish.