The Secret Wisdom of Flowers

Conductor Notes:

SA to SSAA with piano

Laura Hawley is a Canadian composer, conductor, pianist, and educator known for her creative
musical leadership and artistic programming, community engagement, distinctive compositional
style, and passionate advocacy for Canadian choral art.

The Secret Wisdom of Flowers is the third work we have commissioned from her, this time in collaboration with five other Canadian choirs: Nove Voce Choral Society, Ariose, Oriana Women’s Choir, The Aeolian Singers, and Lady Cove Women’s Choir. The texts share a sense of wonder about nature—from the majestic landscape of the opening movement to the smallest detail of a flower in Evening Primrose and Fire Flowers.  The piano’s role is equal to the choir and demands a very skilled player. I have tagged this work as having “texts by women” but note that E. Pauline Johnson is the only woman poet. The suite includes eight movements with a variety of textures and melodies that kept the choir fully engaged throughout the rehearsal process. The work was very well received by audiences.

Highly recommended. Single movements are available for purchase and would work well.

Composer / Arranger Notes:

I began sketching ideas for this work in the autumn of 2021, having no idea at the time what the work would eventually be. I had purchased a book of poetry called “Best-Loved Poems,” and right away found several that inspired musical ideas very quickly, and within a couple of days I had sketched the main ideas for five of the movements. I gave myself the challenge to capture these ideas as simply as possible, without deciding what they would become – if they would be part of a set or single works, if they would be for solo voices, for mixed choir, or for upper voices. It was a truly joyful creative endeavour for me, and I quickly realized these sketches would be part of a larger work for choir and piano. Later, I described the idea of this larger work to Morna Edmundson, Artistic Director of Elektra Women’s Choir, who was enthusiastic about having Elektra as part of the project; and so to my delight it became a work for upper voices and piano!

The piece explores the perspective of flowers and plants, offering an invitation to contemplate the messages, emotions, and wisdom each poetic gem has to offer. It opens with a bold and energized “floral salute” to the day in the first movement, Lord of Morning, staying with day-time themes and feelings for the playful second movement, Marigolds, and Thirsty Earth which is a rollicking drinking song. The piece then moves delicately into the evening and night with Evening Primrose, which features a romantic piano part that should be treated on equal level with the voices, in duet, allowing the phrasing of the singers and the pianist to guide the rubato. We venture deeper into the night with a chant setting of The Heart of Night, then emerge from the night with E. Pauline Johnson’s exquisitely evocative Moonset, which I’ve opened with a lush mezzo solo (selfishly, being a mezzo myself). The penultimate movement, Fire Flowers, is a meditation on the sacred process of destruction and rebirth. In fact, this text has been set so many times, I’ve wondered if it has really become a sacred text of our times, regarded with the same reverence as, for example, the text of the Kyrie. With the close of the work, we arrive again at the dawn, greeting the sun in Sunrise Along the Shore.

This suite includes eight movements:

1. Lord of Morning
   poem by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
2. Marigolds
   poem by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
3. Thirsty Earth
   poem by Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
4. Evening Primrose
   poem by John Clare (1793-1864)
5. The Heart of Night
   poem by Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
6. Moonset
   poem by E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)
7. Fire Flowers
   poem by E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)
8. Sunrise Along the Shore
   poem by L.M. Montgomery (1874-1942)

Text Source

Bliss Carman (1861-1929)
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)
John Clare (1793-1864)
E. Pauline Johnson (1861-1913)
Lucy Maude Montgomery (1874-1942)