Conchord Singers
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November 12th 2022
Peace Concert
February 11th 2023
New Year Concert
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New year concert, February 2022
The Music
‘The
Pilgrim Fathers’ for Choir and
Orchestra
by Andrew M Wilson Opus 182.
The text of “The Pilgrim Fathers” is drawn from two sources: the
poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans (1793-1835) The Landing of the
Pilgrim Fathers, and Sternhold & Hopkins’ Whole Booke of Psalms.
Hemans is a poet best remembered today for The Boy That Stood on the
Burning Deck and The Stately Homes of England, which have
acquired classic status for their titles alone. The Pilgrims included a
community of English religious exiles from Leden in Holland who had
arrived in Southampton in the Speedwell. There, they had made a
rendezvous with the Mayflower and the two ships left Southampton
together on August 5th 1620. They had intended to proceed
straight into the Atlantic, but the Speedwell was in a poor state
of repair and they were forced to put into Dartmouth and then Plymouth
for repairs. Eventually the Mayflower set off alone from Plymouth on
September 6th . The poem recounts the Pilgrims’ thoughts as
they arrived at Cape Cod on November 11th 1620.
The Whole Booke of Psalms, Collected into English Meter
was first published in 1562; it contained
metrical versions of all 150 Psalms, along with canticles and other
biblical passages. By the time the Pilgrim Fathers sailed in 1620, it
had been used in English churches for many years and these versions of
Psalms 114, 42 and 29 were undoubtedly the ones the Fathers would have
known and sung. Andrew has used the original melodies they would have
been familiar with too, although in modern arrangements.