The Singing Lesson for female choir (SSAA)

Some years ago, I met Xenia Hanusiak in Oslo Concert Hall where visiting composer Tan Dun conducted the Oslo Philharmonic in his own works. Xenia Hanusiak impressed me with her writings as culture commentator, essayist and critic. When we later met on other music festivals in Norway where I was working as presenter with the Norwegian Broadcasting, I learned that she also was a very fine lyricist. I asked her if I could set music to her beautiful poem “The Singing Lesson” and here it is for female choir.

The Singing Lesson

The lesson begins with a vowel.

Ah 

An expiration of sound of formed vibrations 

Ah 

As simple as that. To some, the vowel is called the soul of the voice. 

Ah.

The French word for the soul is l’âme.

Ah. A word that sounds so much like the heart

is the same word used for the sound post nestled in a violin. 

Ah. A single splinter of pale white wood connecting 

two sides of a small instrument.

Hidden inside. 

The tiniest piece of wood 

in a violin. Fragile and vulnerable, so completely hidden from light’s 

view that we do not know it exists. 

Forgotten as immediately 

as it is placed. Ah. 

A splinter perched in darkness

that is the heart of a violin. Ah. 

A shadow singing.