Winter Legends (Ben Heneghan) ORGAN PART

Winter Legends is a collection of four new seasonal choral songs for choir, solo soprano, and orchestra. Although primarily written for orchestra, the work can also be performed with piano or organ accompaniment. It was first performed by Llandaff Cathedral Choral Society as part of their Christmas 2020 lockdown concert.

For rehearsal and performance with piano the vocal score is all that is needed. This organ part contains vocal cues as necessary. A study score of the full orchestral version can also be purchased, and the conductor's score and orchestral parts are available for hire. All materials available from fieldgatemusic.com

Winter Legends introduces us to a world of myths and tales about the cold north. Red and White, the opening song, is inspired by the Fly Agaric mushroom, a source of enlightenment in far northern shamanic cultures. The mushroom's distinctive markings may have (literally) coloured the Father Christmas legend. The song contrasts this world with modern civilisation's Christmas preparations.

The Pilgrim and the Amethyst tells of a heartbroken wayfarer, whose violent temper leads him to be forever banished from the magical realm he and his wife had been admitted to. His long life of perpetual atonement transforms him into a mysterious, kindly figure who appears in winter, and leaves behind hidden gifts wherever he goes.

A Spell for Snow is a set of instructions for guaranteeing a white Christmas by knocking the Polar Vortex off its throne and unleashing the northern and eastern winds that bring the snow. 

Finally, The Snow Goose Song imagines a world in which children of the north draw a stylised figure, on misty windows, of a goose in flight, on her way to rescue the sun from the realms of the dead in darkest winter. She secures his release but dies in the process, and her wings become snow and her heart beats forever in the northern lights.

Orchestration: flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 2 trombones, timpani, 2 percussionists (playing bass drum, snare drum, tambourine, suspended cymbal, sleighbells, bell tree, glockenspiel, and vibraphone), harp, and strings.