To: Simffoni Mara, Myles Pepper, David Pepper, Ty Cerdd and friends
Date: December 8, 2024
Songs That Never Come Ashore (2024)
Commissioned by Simffoni Mara with a première performed by soprano Georgina Stalbow accompanied by David Pepper (piano) and Daniel Davies (cello) in Theatr Gwaun, Fishguard, September 22, 2024.
Like Manx shearwater and petrels and swifts, these songs live their lives on the sea. And equally, like seabirds, they are about lives little studied and poorly known.
The lyrics of the song Write With the First quote from a Prize Papers Project letter in which its writer mentions that the Dutch ship he is on was about to pick up some horses in Dublin first, before continuing to North America. This means that this particular ship passed Fishguard over the Celtic Sea and some of the audience ancestors might have seen this very boat.
Below you can find the live recordings taken from the mixing desk of the theatre. Best listened to with headphones.
Write With The First
This song follows the template of a Dutch letter from 1664 as found in the Prize Papers Project archive. The title is a frequently used expression in these letters meaning ‘write to me with the next available ship’. These personal letters often show much dignity, with its writers keeping up hope and spirit, in spite of all the bad news of illnesses and death caused by the returning bouts of plague.
Source of lyrics: edited from letters from Prize Papers Project
Image above shows in transcription “het is hier oock slecht ende de menschen die sterfen haestich in een dach oft 2 gesonten doodt” which I freely interpreted into English as follows: “things are also very bad here, people die fast, in two days the good are dead”.
Sea Shanty
The rhythmical work song of the cycle, which moves focus in the latter part, keeping the work going in the background.
Source of lyrics: the wind directions and latitudes are edited from Henry Hudson’s travel journal of 1609, as well as the thoughts in the second segment of the piece, as found in Narratives of New Netherlands 1609-1664, pp.17-19, by Robert Juett.
49 knots
A thunderous song about being exposed to the elements in the middle of the great big ocean. Only the first part of this work is available at this point of time.
Source of lyrics: edited from letters from Prize Papers Project
JOBINA TINNEMANS 