"white lilies" - a new work for vocalist and orchestra [forthcoming]
( Image Credit: "La Vague" by Gustave Courbet )
PROJECT INFORMATION
“White Lilies” is a new work for vocalist and orchestra by composer Mary Bichner. The piece is a brand new musical setting of the 17th-century Scottish poem “James Harris/The Daemon Lover”, which tells the story of a married woman who is visited by her long lost love, whom she thought had died at sea.
The lyrics to the work are a composite of the eight versions of the poem found in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads by Francis James Child [1825-1896], with a few lyrical variations and re-wordings added in by the composer, to preserve the newly-created melody line and structure (as well as to change to storyline just slightly, to make it a bit more operatic :)).
Singularly, Mary has composed “White Lilies” largely — but not entirely — in the Locrian mode, a dissonant modal scale rarely used in Western music due to its instability. The Locrian mode’s mysterious and unsettling energy lends itself perfectly to the historical poem’s haunting tale.
A piano-and-vocal version of “White Lilies” was composed during November and December of 2023, and premiered at The Lilypad in Cambridge, MA, USA on June 23rd 2024. Mary completed the orchestral version of "White Lilies" in December of 2024, and this new version will receive its world premiere by The Southwest Florida Symphony Orchestra during their "You've Got Mail!: Musical Love Letters" program at the Barbara B. Mann Performance Hall in Fort Myers, FL, USA on February 14th 2025 (ticket information can be found here).
Contact INformation
For more info on "White Lilies" and/or to request a demo recording of the piano-and-vocal version, please contact the composer at:
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