Cantata for a Summer's Day
(1954) for small chorus and chamber orchestra
Duration 33'
Orchestration 1010/0000/str(min 1.1.1.1)
Small Chorus, Narrator
Text: Alexander Hume and Maurice Lindsay
Language English
Commissioned by BBC Scotland

Premiere: 4 September 1955, Edinburgh International Festival
Saltire Singers / Hans Oppenheim, conductor

Publisher:  Novello & Co Ltd

Composer's Note:

A Cantata for a Summer's Day was composed in 1954 while the composer was a student in Paris. It is a setting of poems by the sixteenth century poet Alexander Hume and Maurice Lindsay for vocal quartet and narrator accompanied by a small string group, flute and clarinet.

Hume's poem Of the Day Festival is given to the narrator, except for the very end, and is interspersed by Maurice Lindsay's poetical comments which are sung either by a solo voice or by the ensemble.

The work describes a summer's day in all its moods, including a glimpse of winter in the cool evening mist, and ends with an ensemble in a mood of quiet thanksgiving.

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