Seasonal Snapshots

Date of composition: August 2015
Instrumentation: a cappella choir (SAATBB)
Duration: 9.5'
Text: haikus by Matsuo Basho, Masaoka Shiki, O no Yasumaro

These five miniatures for choir were written after my first experience with slam poetry. A colleague of mine at the time invited me and performed some poetry of her own, accompanying herself on cajón. She described the places she had traveled, people she had seen, atmospheres she had experienced. The stories felt like candid pictures taken with a disposable camera, capturing a small instant of an atmosphere, immortalising it and bringing it to life again through performance. I wanted to achieve this effect with music.

I considered the nature of the idea of snapshots: they had to be short and simple, and create a specific atmosphere. What better textual medium to achieve this than the haikus by the Japanese greats? In my search, a theme quickly surfaced: the describing of the seasons, a recognisable, relatable theme. After I found my inspiration for the four seasons, I added a fifth snapshot, Night, acting as a kind of coda, to ease out of the excitement of the joyous 'Summer' miniature, leaving the listener with a sense of rest. I also really wanted to include a haiku by O no Yasumaro, which I used in this last one, as he is considered the oldest/first known haiku poet.

Seasonal Snapshots is an atmospheric work that relies on creating colours, seeking balance between voices, and evoking images in the listener. Simple in its ideas, it aims to be accessible and momentarily transport an audience to unique auditory spaces, and linger in their memory with its singable melodies.