A Particulare Care

Abstract

A Particulare Care - 11’ A companion piece to Handel’s Foundling Anthem and the Vivaldi Gloria for baroque orchestra SATB choir and SSA soloists.I wanted to do a charity fund raising concert which was concerned with the plight of orphans or 'foundlings'. Knowing that the Vivaldi Gloria was written for the female orphans of the Pio Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, let me to research other pieces. I came across a less well known piece by Handel - the Foundling Anthem which was written to raise funds for the Foundling Hospital. I decided to do these two pieces in a programme called Lost and Found. I went to the Foundling Museum in London to do additional research and found an item, in a book there, not on display. This was one of the tokens, mainly small pieces of cloth, taken from a child's clothing, which was left to identify a child when it was left at the Foundling Hospital. This particular item had some words attached - 'Pray let particulare care be take off this child as it will be called for again". The tragedy inherent in this really struck me - of the 16,282 children admitted, only 152 were ever 'called for again'. This was the inspiration for a new piece, but I needed more words to set. After considerable further research into poetry of the time through to modern poetry, I stumbled on two poems by William Blake which were absolutely perfect for the purpose, one from Songs of Innocenceand one from Songs of Experience. The first (Holy Thursday - Songs of Innocence) is rather a breathless description of the wondrous sight of the Foundling Children arriving at St Paul’s Cathedral in London: ‘walking two & two . . . Till into the high dome of Paul’s they like Thames’ waters flow.’ The second (Holy Thursday - Songs of Experience) is a much more hard-hitting series of questions and conclusions, which ask why a rich and fruitful land is also a land of poverty. By setting these two poems and using the Particulare care words as a linking device, I had an excellent framework for a complete piece.I spent considerable time preparing a new edition of the Handel and the Vivaldi pieces, in the end making a new arrangement of the Vivaldi, adding an oboe part and slightly changing the string parts. Then, using some of this musical material (mainly Handel but with a Vivaldi influence as well) I wrote the new piece for the same baroque forces. This involved some research into the use of reconstructed or original instruments of the era, using the harmonics of a natural trumpet and also research into a suitable tuning system for the keyboard instruments - after consultation with the organ tuner we opted for a shifted Valloti Young temperament which works for the Vivaldi and Handel, but also for the harmonic shifts of my new piece. The Lost and Found concert was first performed in St Luke's Holloway, London April 2012, repeated there in March 2017 and given in St Michael's Bugle Street, Southampton in May 2017.The piece A Particulare Care has also been performed on several other occasions, including a performance for the Richard Cloudesley Charity in St Mary's Church Upper Street Islington and is being performed for them again there in June 2017.

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