The Mr. Siegel Songbook
The Mr. Siegel Songbook is a setting of six poems, for a variety of instruments, composed
for the centennial celebration of St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California. The
centennial weekend included a concert, and my friend Ching Chang, who sings in the choir and
organizes their concert series, asked if I would like to write a piece for the occasion. The
congregation includes a number of talented musicians, and I tried to use them all by setting
each poem for a different group of musicians.
For each of the songs, I have included PDFs of the full score and instrumental parts, and an MP3
of my computer's rendition of the song, with the sung parts assigned to various instruments. I
read the part of the speaker in The Second Coming.
- Trees (Joyce Kilmer) for mixed chorus (in the concert, doubled by
strings)
- The Cat and the Moon (William Butler Yeats) for soprano, piano and string
quintet
- Pied Beauty (Gerard Manley Hopkins) for soprano, oboe and piano
- The Second Coming (William Butler Yeats) for speaker, soprano,
chorus, string quintet, oboe, piano, organ, bass drum and handbells
- Anecdote of the Jar (Wallace Stevens) for soprano, oboe and string
quintet
- The Windhover (Gerard Manley Hopkins) for soprano, chorus, organ and
handbells
An here are my original program notes for the piece (in the concert program,
we cut out some of the text).