Compositions by Charles M Lines

Here are the compositions I have written: 

Charles M Lines: compositions

They are presented in chronological order, from most recent to earliest.

If you would like to perform any of these pieces, please leave comment here or contact me via Facebook or any of the other addresses provided. 

Tsurara: A Tone Poem for Small Orchestra and Soprano Chorus

Tsurara is inspired by the Tsurara Onna, the icicle woman of Japanese folklore: a figure who appears in winter and vanishes with the thaw.

Rather than retelling the myth, the piece explores the emotional climate she suggests: beauty held in tension, intimacy edged with cold, presence always on the verge of disappearance.

The music unfolds within a world of suspended breath. The orchestra plays sempre non vibrato and at the softest of dynamics, creating a soundscape that feels frozen, fragile and foreboding. Bright percussion glints through the texture like light catching upon ice.

Eventually, a brief, brittle quickening skates upon the stillness: bright, pointillistic, unstable; it threatens to slightly crack the frozen surface of the music.

Then the work’s most intimate moment emerges: a passage where something a little warmer, melting and more vulnerable reveals itself.

Later, like voices heard through falling snow, a soprano chorus begins to sing: bright, insistent, then distant.

They deepen the hypnotic song of Tsurara.

Then the song fades, slowly rising and dissolving into the cold night air.

What remains is a feeling of something glimpsed and too quickly lost: an ethereal beauty of frost, longing, and gentle breath.

 

Demo Recording

Score

Tsurara Onna

Tree withering cold

Frost fingers tap my window:

Light, light, so lightly;

I feel your ice mist stir me…

Strangely welcome in the night.

 

In winter you come,

To stay with me in the dark:

Feeding on my warmth,

Sharing your seductive cold;

We entwine and slowly merge.

 

Skin withering cold

Lips finding and kissing me

Through the night softly;

I feel my hot life flowing

Toward your rime-crusted heart;

 

Soul withering cold;

Your arms are the freezing clouds

That carry me up,

Up toward the aloof stars,

Where you and I disappear.  

                                                                    CML