Anthony Powers

High Windows

Forces or Category: High voice & piano

for high voice and piano
The words for this cycle are drawn from poems by Philip Larkin. There are three lyrics about the natural world and two typically down-beat townscapes, framed and linked with a setting of the visionary final lines fo the title poem. The whole suggests a musical form as close to a Baroque cantata as to later song cycles.

High Windows

Anthony Powers

Description

Programme Notes:

1. The Trees
2. Solar
3. Dublinesque
4. Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel
5. Cut Grass
In writing some songs for Michael Chance I wanted to find texts that would avoid the associations of the counter-tenor voice with things strange and un-wordly. Larkin's poems, with their finely observed realities seemed ideal, and I chose five from his final (1974) collection High Windows.
There are three lyrics about the natural world (The Trees, Solar, Cut Grass) and two

High Windows

Anthony Powers

Composer Information