Stoke Fleming

For unaccompanied mixed choir

Duration: 3:30

Text · Performance History · Purchase Sheet Music

Stoke Fleming is a small hamlet on the English Channel. The text for this work is a secular meditation on the rocks and the waves written by the composer during a weekend stay there in 1978. The music was completed in January 2000 and received a reading by the Gregg Smith Singers at the Adirondack Festival of American Music in July 2000.

Gonçalo Lourenço conducted the Chamber Singers of the College-Conservatory of Music in the world premiere performance of Stoke Fleming on March 11, 2010, in the Werner Recital Hall at the Corbett Center for the Performing Arts in Cincinnati, Ohio.

The recording heard here was made by Matthew Curtis of Choraltracks.

Stoke Fleming

You rugged stone
I am the crashing wave upon you
Caressing your bold form
I am the motion which surrounds you
while you hold firm
I roll upon you wash you and recoil
You accept my touch and watch me go

I'm that crest there
Pounding myself on the open beach
Spreading over the sand
I run out from my salty keep
But fall back in again
I fall away from land away from air
I will sink out in and lose myself

There

Purchase Sheet Music

Sheet music for Stoke Fleming is available from J. W. Pepper.

Performance History

Premiered March 11, 2010, by the Chamber Singers of the College-Conservatory of Music, Gonçalo Lourenco conducting, Werner Recital Hall, Cincinnati, Ohio.

May 7 & 8, 2016, by the Acadia Choral Society, under Jamie Hagedorn, at St Saviour's Parish, Maine.

June 4, 2016, by the Acadia Choral Society, under Jamie Hagedorn, at St Andrew Lutheran Church, Ellsworth, Maine.