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The document summarizes a tone poem called "The Journey" composed by Timothy Phelan based on the story of a Swedish couple who emigrate to Canada during a time of famine in 1870. Phelan was commissioned to write the piece for a Swedish classical guitar duo and orchestra. The tone poem uses themes from three Swedish and Canadian folk songs to represent the couple's journey from rural Sweden to settling on the Canadian prairies, incorporating the hardships of emigration and their new life in North America. Throughout, the guitar duo represents the voices of the emigrant couple and their changing emotions during the journey.
The document summarizes a tone poem called "The Journey" composed by Timothy Phelan based on the story of a Swedish couple who emigrate to Canada during a time of famine in 1870. Phelan was commissioned to write the piece for a Swedish classical guitar duo and orchestra. The tone poem uses themes from three Swedish and Canadian folk songs to represent the couple's journey from rural Sweden to settling on the Canadian prairies, incorporating the hardships of emigration and their new life in North America. Throughout, the guitar duo represents the voices of the emigrant couple and their changing emotions during the journey.
The document summarizes a tone poem called "The Journey" composed by Timothy Phelan based on the story of a Swedish couple who emigrate to Canada during a time of famine in 1870. Phelan was commissioned to write the piece for a Swedish classical guitar duo and orchestra. The tone poem uses themes from three Swedish and Canadian folk songs to represent the couple's journey from rural Sweden to settling on the Canadian prairies, incorporating the hardships of emigration and their new life in North America. Throughout, the guitar duo represents the voices of the emigrant couple and their changing emotions during the journey.
In the spring of 2015, I was in Sweden to perform a solo
recital !and to conduct a guitar concerto, written by Swedish composer Erland von Koch, with the Nyköping Philharmonic. !
I had also been commissioned to write and conduct a piece
of music to be performed by a Swedish classical guitar duo with a guitar orchestra.!
The slow second movement of the concerto was based on a
very beautiful Swedish folksong about emigration to the new world during time of famine.!
I decided to write something that would link with the guitar
concerto, and that would also tie together our two countries by using folk songs from both Sweden and Canada. !
And so, based on a bit of research, I invented the following
semi-fictitious story that would serve as the basis for my tone poem, which I have called The Journey…!
The year is 1870, and a young newlywed couple’s early
hopes and dreams of happiness in rural Sweden are shattered by the spectre of famine and economic hardship. !
After taking the heart-rending decision to leave family and
homeland behind them, they endure the cruel trans-Atlantic crossing and witness terrible suffering and loss amongst their beleaguered fellow passengers. !
Grateful for their own safe arrival on American soil, ! !
they continue on to the Prairies in search of fertile land, eventually following the lifeblood of the Red River north into the newly formed Canadian province of Manitoba. !
There they settle the land and make their new home together, ever mindful of what they have reluctantly left behind.!
And so, to this purpose, I have based the composition on
themes from three folksongs. !
The first song, Värmlandsvisan, initially appears in a
peaceful major mode, but soon modulates into its original and more menacing minor key. ! Emigrantvisan, the folksong dealing with the theme of emigration, also undergoes transformation, ! ! ! at one point even becoming a rollicking sea chanty. !
Upon the safe arrival of the young couple on North American
soil, the listener will hear a hymn-like prayer of thanksgiving that gives way to a prairie waltz, which then goes on to incorporate the Canadian folksong Red River Valley.!
Throughout this journey, the voices of the guitar duo! !
represent the emigrant couple, often engaging in dialogue amidst their ever-changing physical and emotional environments, even to the point where one voice can be heard reassuring against the doubts or fears of the partner. !
And in the closing section of the piece, as the couple begins
to settle in their new home, there is a melding of fragments from all three of the work’s musical themes, as the river – and indeed life – flow onward against the backdrop of the endless prairie horizon. !
This story of emigration seems particularly timely, ! !
given our global concern over the plight of the world’s refugees. !
But even beyond this literal association, is the figurative
reference to the many types of journeys of the human condition, and the universal struggles faced by us all.!