SATB, a cappella

Color Madrigals was originally conceived because of a commission during my 10-year residency with The Singers - Minnesota Choral Artists. Artistic Director Matthew Culloton had asked for something short on the theme of love and, having found something by English poet, John Keats, I felt that the work was a bit shorter than we had envisioned. That original text mentioned a color, so I thought I might write something else using a Keats text that mentioned a color and thus was born the first “volume” of my so-called color madrigals; the green and red movements. This was followed pretty immediately by a commission from the Summer Singers (Vicki Peters, conductor) for the purple and yellow movements and, later that year, Matt asked to finish out the set with the blue and orange madrigals.

Program note: The life of a satyr must be an easy thing.  Essentially they just follow the wine-god around and spend most of their lives wrapped in joy and ecstasy in a drunken state of glee.  I used some extended vocal techniques (glissandi, vocal “hiccups” and a violent, “drunken” key change) to portray the unpredictable nature of a jovial forest creature that’s had way too much to drink.

Note: Yellow Brooms and Cold Mushrooms is the fourth movement of the Color Madrigals. It can be purchased and performed separately.

 The Text

By John Keats (England, 1795-1821)
Adapted by the composer

Yellow Brooms and Cold Mushrooms 
‘Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs!  Whence came ye,
So many, and so many, and such glee?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
      Your nuts in oak-tree cleft?’—
‘For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree;
For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
      And cold mushrooms;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth;
Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth!
Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
      To our mad minstrelsy!’