Sun Dogs: The Witnesses, The Beauty of This Miracle

for mixed choir and triangle

Parhelia, or ‘sun dogs’, are atmospheric phenomena that create bright patches of light on either side of the sun. The piece is in two parts. The first, The Witnesses, presents four very different testimonies of seeing sun dogs, from pre-Christian Rome, and 14th and 15th-century England. Sung successively by solo sopranos, a solo tenor, tutti tenor and tutti sopranos they are separated by a wordless refrain (accompanied by triangles) that, at its third iteration, becomes increasingly embellished and desperate. Full of bare octave doublings and primeval drones, the music sounds ancient and atavistic, with an often primitive declamatory vigour.

The second part, The Beauty of This Miracle, is more impressionistic, setting a sequence of aphoristic fragments describing more recent sightings. The pace is unfailingly slow, the atmosphere rapt, the tone awed and refulgent, the tonality constantly shifting. A solo soprano doubled an octave higher by whistling is particularly haunting and supernatural presence in this mysteriously ineluctable skyscape.

— from notes by Gabriel Jackson © 2013

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Year
2007
Commissioner
Latvian Radio Choir with support from the Latvian State Culture Capital Fund
Instrumentation
SSAAATTBBB, triangle
Text
Julius Obsequens (4th century AD), Jakob Hutter (c 1500–1536), Marcus Tullius Cicero (106BC–43BC), King Edward IV of England (1442–1483)
Language
English
Duration
22 min
Premiere
Latvian Radio Choir and conductor Sigvards Kļava at St John’s Church in Riga, Latvia on 30 October 2007
Score
ISMN
979-0-706642-08-6 (MB0705)
Recordings
State Choir LatvijaAt the Foot of the Sky