Matthew Whittall's large-scale choral song cycle Songs of Travel (2020-2021) is set to poems by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), compiled and adapted by the composer.

The opening song, Home no more home, presents a simple, ambiguously modal tune at the outset, before sending out tendrils in searching, halting rhythms, a slow, reluctant tread off into the hills, clouded by memory. The middle three songs are brighter in tone, attempting to find solace in a variety of places - in the land, in the firma-ment, on the sea - but all ultimately turn reflectively inward. In the highlands touches on a number of folk traditions, including bagpipe-like strains and a Swedish herding call known as kulning. The infinite shining heavens is a rapt, glowing meditation on the night sky. Give me the sun is an original setting of Stevenson's lyrics for the popular Skye Boat Song, with fragments of the original tune ghosted here and there throughout the texture. The final movement, Evensong, combines three poems on the theme of leave-taking. Here the tone of melancholy becomes one of gentle resignation, not to an ending, but an acceptance of suffering, and of transience.

Duration: 30'
1. Home no more home (7')
2. In the highlands (4'30'')
3. The infinite shining heavens (5')
4. Give me the sun (5'30'')
5. Evensong (8')

Songs are also available separately as downloadable and printable PDF publications.

Canadian-Finnish composer Matthew Whittall (b. 1975) began his studies as a hornist in Montreal. He earned degrees in performance and composition from Vanier College, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and Stony Brook University, before settling in Finland in 2001. There he studied at the Sibelius Academy, receiving his Doctor of Music degree with honors in 2013. Whittall's prolific output covers a wide variety of genres, particularly orchestra, voice, chorus, chamber and solo instrumental works, with occasional forays into electronics. His works have been commissioned by the Helsinki Philharmonic, the Finnish Radio Symphony, the Helsinki and Vancouver Chamber Choirs, and Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra, among others. His music has featured in festivals and radio broadcasts worldwide. In 2013, his work “Dulcissima, clara, sonans”, a setting of poetry by Hildegard of Bingen for soprano and orchestra, won Finland's highest composition award, the Teosto Prize.