Bird Songs

Bird Songs is a playful and uplifting work centred around bird-themed texts. ‘Two Owls’ presents a whimsical children’s rhyme in a lightly swung style, with characterful interplay between the voices reflecting the dialogue between the protagonists. The swan is the central character of the second movement, which sets a sixteenth-century Italian text that is at once elegiac, sad, and serene. These moods are captured through stately rhythms, emotive harmonic language, and homophonic textures. The third movement brings Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s joyous depiction of the lark, with lilting, waltz-like music and an orchestral interlude. The final movement sets Emily Dickinson’s ‘Hope is the thing with feathers’, which offers the image of birds as a symbol of the hope we must cling to in the darkest times. The musical style is poignant and simple, demonstrating Rutter’s characteristic melodic grace and bringing the work to a reflective but hopeful close.

Full score and parts …