Score (24 pp.) + Part (3 pp.)

Performing Forces: SATB Chorus, Piano, Maracas, and Bongos

Format: PDF

Duration: 5 1/4 min.

Catalogue No.: 130

Program note for A Poet’s Life as of February, 2021

A Poet’s Life, for SATB Chorus, Piano, and Percussion, is based on a poem by New Hampshire poet, Ann Driscoll. The original musical version of A Poet’s Life, for treble chorus (SSAA) and piano, was composed for the Seacoast’s own women’s chorus, Voices from the Heart, directed by Joanne Connolly. The premiere performance, in 2006, came about through a collaboration between Voices from the Heart and the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program. I was fortunate at that time to be able to choose from a vast number of poems submitted to the PPLP for possible use in this collaboration. I was immediately drawn to A Poet’s Life for its truthfulness, spontaneity, humor and imagery. I am grateful to Ann Driscoll for having written A Poet’s Life, and I also appreciate the efforts of William Kempster and the UNH Chamber Singers for having brought this new SATB version to life in 2011. A few years later, Sam Bradley, then a Masters student in Musicology at UNH, led another excellent performance of the SATB version at UNH on his graduation recital.

I should mention that I took some liberties in rearranging the order of some words of the poem in certain places reminiscent perhaps of a drawing or two by Picasso. My apologies go to the poet for that and also to Frederic Chopin for my not too serious quotation of his famous funeral march to invoke the “gloomy” side.

—-C. Kies, 2021