Rachel Parkes, who will be conducting our concert at St John’s Carrington, 29 November 2025, has chosen a programme that includes Cecilia McDowall’s Music of the Stars. The score contains a ‘Composer’s note’ that conductor and singer can use to deepen their understanding of both text and the music, resulting in a richer performance for the audience.
Just as we commissioned Libby Croad to compose The Nightingale for our 40th anniversary, so James Petersen, a member of the Chamber Singers of Iowa City, commissioned Music of the Stars to mark the choir’s 50th season.
James and his partner suggested a commission that could “celebrate the power of music in these difficult times”. To acknowledge the racial issue that surround us, the texts offered were all written by people of colour. For the middle movement, the composer found and adapted writing from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson (b.1958).
1st movement: ‘Music of the Stars’, a poem by Brian Odongo (b.1994), evokes ‘dark night clouds’ illuminated by ancient radiant stars as they watch over mortals’ adventures below. Compelled by the horrors unfolding in Ukraine as she worked on the piece, McDowall wove into the poem words from a Ukrainian folksong.
2nd movement: For ‘The hardest thing’, an explanation of ‘light’ and how we perceive it, the composer aimed to bring a more conversational style to her setting of Tyson’s prose.
3rd movement: Of the poem ‘The Gift to Sing’ by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), McDowall wrote, “These heart-warming words bring an affirmation of what the power of singing can do for us all in times of difficulty.”
Click to read more about the concert and to book tickets.
Cecilia McDowall, Music of the Stars, pub: Oxford University Press, 2023
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