Peter Jancewicz

Several years ago, Alberta poet Elly van Mourik invited me to write music to accompany her poetry, with the intention of recording it on a CD. We recorded the CD in 2003 in Leacock Theatre at Mount Royal College Conservatory, using their lovely Fazioli 308 piano. Elly decided to include a 24 page booklet with her poetry written out, and beautifully accompanied by watercolours by Alberta artist Anke Klapp (see cover at left). Elly decided to call the CD, "Oh Evergreens", because of her love for the evergreen trees growing around her home in Sundre, Alberta. Below is a short blurb I wrote about the music for the CD booklet.

About the music

My path crossed that of Elly van Mourik’s several times in the years that I have lived in Alberta. I first met her at a music festival in Olds. She invited me back the following year to give a masterclass for local piano students. We would occasionally see each other at concerts in Calgary. We met again at a reception at the Banff Center, and she mentioned that she was writing poetry. I asked to see it, and some time later, a package appeared in our mailbox. I read through her poetry, and loved it. In her words, I felt the passion and conviction that I recognized in her manner – she is a small, very intense and energetic woman with a delightful Dutch accent – but beneath that intensity, I detected a wonderful sense of calm and tranquillity. This is the message her poetry sends to me: a passionate, intense, almost militant call for peace, harmony and simplicity. I immediately composed a song to one of the poems (an early version of Time Before Ages) and sent it to her. She invited me to compose some piano music to accompany a set of poems she calls “Oh Evergreens” and I agreed. With alacrity.

I spent some time absorbing the poetry, thinking, sketching, improvising, discarding almost everything. I found myself drawn to an old Shaker melody, “Simple Gifts”, made famous by Aaron Copland in his “Appalachian Spring”. The music I composed is essentially a set of variations or fantasies on that melody. Every piece bears some relationship to Simple Gifts, whether it be a tiny cell of a phrase, entire building blocks of the melody, or simply echoes of the mood. A few examples: for “Serenade”, Elly suggested the song “Standchen” by Schubert, and I found a way to re-write the “Simple Gifts” melody to fit with Schubert’s accompaniment pattern. In “Solitariness” and “The Word Composer”, my inspiration was the music of Bartok and Kodaly, and Simple Gifts makes its appearance in a dance in the left hand. “Time Before Ages” is a barcarolle based on an inversion of the melody and dedicated to my wife, Susan Hlasny. For “The Workers”, we hear a frenetic toccata with a musical simulation of a motor breaking down. For the penultimate piece, heard with the poems “The Far Beyond” and “The Dawn of a New Age”, I simply made my own arrangement of the melody. For the rest, I leave it to your inquiring ears to discover the connections!

You may order a copy of the CD through this website. Price: $20.00. It is also available through Rideau Music.