Score (15 pp.)

Performing Forces: Treble or Children’s Chorus and Piano

Format: PDF

Duration: 4 min.

Catalogue No.: 129

Program Note

Two Songs from “The Wind in the Willows” was composed in May of 1997. The words in the first song, Ducks’ Ditty, are taken verbatim from a poem which appears in Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s story, The Wind in the Willows. This poem was composed by the Rat (or Ratty, as the Mole called him) while he was sitting on a riverbank observing the ducks going about their daily business. The second song, Toad’s Triumph, uses a poem composed by the very conceited Toad, who sang a song about his many virtues as he walked down the road one day. I added a short introduction and postlude to Toad’s poem, borrowing adjectives which he used to describe himself in the story. These two songs were given their premiere performance by the PALS Children’s Chorus in 1998, and they have been performed on several occasions by Sandpipers, Seacoast Children’s Chorus (in Portsmouth, N.H.) and also the U.N.H. Chamber Singers and the Women’s Chorus of the Summer Youth Music School at U.N.H.. In 1998, I composed a third piece based on a poem found in The Wind in the Willows entitled, Carol of the Field Mice, for three-part treble chorus (or for two-part chorus with Horn accompaniment).

---C. K.