Search - Edward Joseph Collins, Marin Alsop, Jane Irwin :: Music of Edward Joseph Collins, Vol. 6

Collins's Big Piece for Chorus, Soloist and Orchestra

J Scott Morrison | Middlebury VT, USA | 08/27/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"'Hymn to the Earth' was written in 1929 on commission, but there is no record of its having been performed at that time. The doyen of Chicago choral directors, the late William Ferris, discovered a microfilm copy of the score in the 1980s and gave the piece its first performance in 1989. In Collins's own words, 'There are many fetching things in the work but it is old-fashioned and naïve in spots.' The work, in six movements, lasts almost 40 minutes and is set to Collin's own text which is in rather archaic language, certainly language that was out of fashion even in the 1920s. (However, we must remember that in some quarters this kind of mock-archaic language was still used, as in Deems Taylor's 1927 'The King's Henchman' with libretto by none other than Edna Saint Vincent Millay.) Although skillfully constructed, with choruses, solos for the four soloists (SATB) and for the quartet, chorus and orchestra, it nonetheless tends to remain fairly gray. There are a few memorable moments, as in the beguiling soprano solo in waltz time ('Hour of youth, Springtime of life') and in the final section, but overall this work seems destined to lie dormant with many other similar pieces written in the past one hundred years. The musical language is conservative, romantic, tonal and there is a neat fugal passage toward the end. Still, it doesn't come to much, I'm afraid.



On the other hand, the remaining pieces on this disc, 'Variations on an Irish Folksong' (based primarily on 'Oh! The Taters they are small over here!', 18 minutes) and the brief (2 mins.) 'Cowboy's Breakdown' are utterly delightful. Written in 1935, the latter predates Aaron Copland's essays in 'cowboy music,' and is of the same ilk.



The performances by Marin Alsop leading the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Chorus are unexceptionable, as is the life-like sound.



TT=56:54



Scott Morrison"