“As we’ve seen before…Getty has a special relationship with the human voice –…”
Records International
September 2018 Catalogue

• For SATB chorus and chamber orchestra
• Duration: 2:45
• Poem by Gordon Getty

Orchestration: 2 flutes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, celesta, strings
(Piano reduction available)
Perusal score and text available upon request

Stream Beauty Come Dancing on the album: Beauty Come Dancing

COMPOSER’S NOTES
Choral Pieces
“Beauty Come Dancing”
“Ballet Russe”
“There Was a Naughty Boy”
“For a Dead Lady”
“Those Who Love”

All these texts were set at the Salzburg Festival two years ago on my trusty 88–key Casio. I had written the text to “Beauty Come Dancing” at the Festival del Sole just before. The dance theme makes it a natural companion to Masefield’s “Ballet Russe.” There a ballerina dances to Chopin piano accompaniment. I aimed for tunes he might have written but didn’t. Although Masefield’s verse and mine scan in iambic pentameter, I set both to waltzes. That can be tricky.

John Keats heads my poetic pantheon, with Masefield a close second. I would choose the same two, in the same order, for comic poetry. Keats’ “There Was a Naughty Boy” is a delicious example.

E. A. Robinson, like Masefield, paid no court to modernism. “For a Dead Lady” and “Eros Tyrannos” build like Bach fugues. No poet surpasses him for cadence and the longer breath. Sara Teasdale’s “Those Who Love” shows the equal power of a lighter touch.