Setting text by Leonora Speyer, and an Official Selection of the 2025 MSC Call for Scores, Toronto-based composer and educator Tyrese Walters’ The Swallows (To Youth) uses music to craft poignant parallels between the playfulness of birds and the joys of children’s music education, as experienced firsthand by the composer.
With energetic harmonic transitions and melodic interplay mimicking the nature of birds in flight, this piece is suitable for most moderate to advanced ensembles, including university level and high school groups. Easily incorporated into program themes of nature, birds, flight, and sky, as well as youth, innocence, and appreciation of our educators.
VIEW PERUSAL SCORE:
MSC0027 – The Swallows (To Youth) – SCORE PERUSAL PDF
PROGRAM NOTE:
The Swallows (to youth) was inspired by my time as a children’s music educator. I was specifically inspired by the playful nature of early music education and how games can foster a dynamic learning environment for children. With poetry by Leonora Speyer, this piece connects the lively nature of birds in flight, intermittent bird chatter, and the jovial energy of children at play. The piece contains emulations of bird calls, and the intertwining shifts between chorale and polyphonic textures represent the fast and veering flight patterns of the swallow. To me, this is not unlike the classroom, where students and educators alike experience moments filled with excitement, quarrel, challenges, and joy.
ORIGINAL TEXT:
Leonora Speyer (1872-1956)
Swallows
They dip their wings in the sunset,
They dash against the air
As if to break themselves upon its stillness:
In every movement, too swift to count,
Is a revelry of indecision,
A furtive delight in trees they do not desire
And in grasses that shall not know their weight.
They hover and lean toward the meadow
With little edged cries;
And then,
As if frightened at the earth’s nearness,
They seek the high austerity of evening sky
And swirl into its depth.
$2.75
