"Byrd Song" by Joanna Forbes L'Estrange

Byrd Song

Words William Byrd

Music Joanna Forbes L’Estrange

A jazzy part-song

SSA + piano

Composer’s notes

I was delighted to be commissioned by Jubilate, an accomplished and wonderfully energetic upper voice choir from north London, to compose a piece about the joys of singing. Since this year marks the 400th anniversary of the death of one of England’s finest composers, William Byrd, I decided to set his words about all the benefits, both physical and mental, of learning to sing. I’ve had this inspirational text in a frame on the wall of my music room for many years. The final couplet ‘Since singing is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing’ is the only part which rhymes and scans so I adopted those words as my refrain. The occasional iterations of ‘and woman/women’ are not by Byrd; I added them to bring the song up to date and to create a play on words with the title .

The style of music is a mix of quasi 16th-century - the opening is based on Byrd’s Ave Verum - and jazz swing. Each vocal part has a turn at singing the melody line in the verses so choirs should take care to observe the dynamic markings so as never to obscure the tune. As with all of my secular music, the default setting should be for the text to be sung as closely as possible to how it would be spoken. Any exceptions to this rule (e.g. the mimicking of vocal exercises and the word ‘orator’ in b.47-8) are clearly marked in the score.

Scoring: SSA/piano

Difficulty level: medium

Duration: 4 minutes

Joanna Forbes L’Estrange is an internationally renowned British singer, composer and choir director. For seven years she led the five-time Grammy® Award-winning vocal group The Swingles; this experience informs her compositional style which is a mix of traditional choral and jazz. In addition to her choral church music, she has written many songs for upper voice choirs, often on the theme of gender equality: Twenty-first-century Woman, A Woman (Wearing Bloomers) on a Wheel and The Three Wise Women are three such songs, all available from www.lestrangemusic.com

Joanna and her husband, the composer, arranger and jazz multi-instrumentalist Alexander L’Estrange, offer choral coaching, part-learning tracks and backing tracks for all of their publications. Email info@lestrangemusic.com with your enquiry.

© 2023 andagio All Rights Reserved

Joanna Forbes L’Estrange March 2023

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