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Percussion Equipment List: 2 timpani, log drum, 3 gongs of differing pitch, triangle, bass drum, suspended cymbal, 5 temple blocks, bongos, maracas, conga, crotales
Performance Notes: Lyca can be performed by a minimum of four singers. The choir alternates among unison, two-part and three-part divisi passages. The five solo passages may ideally be performed by different voices, but more than one can also be assigned to the same performer. Solo 4 (rehearsal mark F, mm. 174-207) reaches a low G and is in a suitable range for a mezzo-soprano or dramatic soprano.
First movement only was performed by GamUT, directed by Norbert Palej, March 26 2014, in Walter Hall, Toronto.
The complete version was premiered by an ad hoc group conducted by Gary Kulesha March 22, 2015 in Victoria College Chapel.
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Lyca, based on a pair of poems from William Blake’s engraved volume Songs of Experience, was written for GamUT ensemble in 2014. The idiosyncratic instrumentation reflects the membership of the group for which it was originally composed. The poems tell the fantastical story of a girl, Lyca, lost in the wilderness and carried away by a lion to his underground palace. In the second poem, her anguished parents search for her until they encounter the lion, who leads them to their sleeping child and offers them a peaceful existence in his kingdom. The introductory stanzas strongly imply that the following account has a cosmic significance, and the tale is widely interpreted as an allegory of humanity's future redemption. It can also be read as the psychological narrative of a child's passage into adulthood and the parents' eventual acceptance of that transition. My musical setting was guided by the story's multiple levels --- the human emotions of the protagonists and the intimations of an underlying meaning.
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