Go to the download page for an extract from For Death Has Climbed In Through Our Windows.

Program note

For Death Has Climbed In Through Our Windows, for SATB choir and chamber orchestra, is a setting of the following text from the Old Testament:

Call for the mourners to come,
Send for the skilled women to come.
Let them come and raise a dirge over us,
So that our eyes may run with tears,
And our eyelids flow with water.

For the sound of lamenting is heard from Zion:
"How ruined are we,
How great is our shame,
For we have left our land,
Our homes have been cast down."

Listen, women, to the word of the Lord,
Let your ears receive the word of his mouth.
Teach your daughters a lament, and one another a dirge.

For Death has climbed in through our windows
And entered our palaces,
Taking the children from the streets
And the young men from the squares.

Corpses lie scattered
Like dung in the fields,
Like sheaves behind the reaper,
With no one to gather them.

(Jeremiah chapter 9 verses 16-21)
 

For Death Has Climbed In Through Our Windows is dedicated to the Gosford Philharmonia Choir and to its conductor Philip Rees.
 

Instrumentation

Flute
Oboe
Clarinet in Bb
Bassoon

Horn in F
Trumpet in C (or in Bb)
Tenor Trombone

Timpani (4 drums, tuned in F, G, C, E throughout) (optional: 5th drum tuned to low E).
Percussion (2 players):
     Player 1: Snare drum, crash cymbals, suspended cymbal, whip.
     Player 2: Orchestral bass drum, rattle.

Pianoforte

Strings: minimum of 4.4.2.2.1 (a slightly larger group is preferable)

SATB choir: Ideally about 8 or 10 singers to a part.

Note: Some minor revisions were made to the score after the premiere performance.

Performance materials are available from me or from the Australian Music Centre.

Performances, etc

• Premiere performance by the Gosford Philharmonia Choir on 24th April 2004 in Gosford High School Auditorium, Gosford, New South Wales, Australia.

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© Gordon Monro 2004-5.       Last modified: January 4, 2005.
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