Description
“There is nothing to fear” is an orchestration of Joseph Dillon Ford’s choral work “Surrender”.
The original choral work was written on a poem by Henry Burt Stevens
and was dedicated to David Warin Solomons, who recorded it several years ago…
After Joseph’s untimely death in 2017, David decided that an orchestral version would be appropriate to form a cameo within a concert in his memory – the lower strings follow the lines of the lower voices of the orignal choral version whilst the melodies of the solo vocal part are repeated at intervals in various sections of the orchestra (wind, horn and solo violin) to create a tapestry of sound.
The flutes (and eventually also the horn) are also given instructions to make unpitched wind sounds to represent breath or the passing of time.
The original poem by Henry Burt Stevens is:
surrender
nothing to do
surrende
no place to go
surrend
right here now
surren
this moment
surre
there is nothing to fear
surr
be calm
sur
be patient
su
just observe
s
if otherwise I would have told you so