Salve Regina

Composer's note:Each year at their Summer Festival in Tavistock, the Exon Singers feature the music of a living composer. In the summer of 2008 I was privileged to be the chosen composer. Salve Regina was written for the Festival and was performed once at a concert and subsequently at the broadcast of Choral Evensong in Buckfast Abbey.The music is unaccompanied and set for a six-part choir, with two parts for both sopranos and basses (and divisi for altos and tenors in the final phrase). The music begins gently and there is some dialogue between upper and lower voices. The climax in the middle uses all six parts and the end is quiet and reflective. Although some of the phrases areshort, they should be sung with much expression and with appropriate crescendos and diminuendos.