Description
Performance Notes
I am generally very sparse with articulation and dynamic markings as I don’t want the music to be too locked into any interpretation. I believe that the notes themselves will conjure the kinds of articulations and dynamics necessary to illustrate the texts.
I’ve added some articulation markings in some genre-specific pieces. They are there merely as a guideline for those perhaps not so accustomed to playing a swing style of music. The pieces do have reference recordings; not as a definition of how to perform these songs, but as an illustration of how we were feeling in the moment of performing them.
My approach to music leans much more towards improvisation than strict composition, so I view these pieces as malleable and open to whatever interpretative impulses may come from the readings of the musicians in their own context when learning and performing these songs.
A bit about Newfoundland
The poetry in this song cycle draws heavily from the culture of Newfoundland, a rather remote province of Canada in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Even today, Newfoundland has a relatively remote population, who have a very rich and deep diversity of dialects.
Modern communities remain inaccessible by car, and the Island portion of the province has a land mass about the same of that of Tennessee, with a total population of 500,000. Life there traditionally revolves around the ocean and associated with a very rugged kind of lifestyle. The four poems in this set describe different scenarios, both realistic and fantastical.
Confession is a story of children hooking their fishing lines onto seagulls and is told through the perspective of a child. Far from innocent creatures, a Blues-style has been invoked to give a kind of jaunty-confident energy to the text. The pronunciation shouldn’t be too pure as kids on the south coast of Newfoundland wouldn’t speak that way. A reference recording of the poem being read to give an idea of the sound can be found at this link. This song stands out regarding dialect. The last three songs can be performed using standard diction.
Rust is an imagining of the Devil coming to ruin the women of a small remote community. Inspired by a shape found in the stones of the local area, the story takes on a literal meaning. An over-the-top operatic style carries the drama.
Devil’s Footprint is about a boy watching his father’s weathered hands at work as a fisherman – imagining the different worlds that those hands have witnessed. Told like a dream, both innocent and imaginative, with elements of jig rhythms (very important in Newfoundland music) coming through the middle.
The final song, Row, is a bar-room story, streaming out in a torrent – about the rambunctious lives of sailors in a vivid personal account. A high-tempo, long-winded jig carries the story all the way to the end.
