Duration: 8′

  • Three songs
  • Text: Christie Dickason
  • SSAA with harp or piano accompaniment
  • 1. Autumn Migration  |  2. Night Garden  |  3. Would like to meet
  • Gemini Publications
  • First performance 19 June 2005  |  City of Canterbury Chamber Choir/Ruth Potter (harp)/George Vass  |  St Mary’s Church, Chilham, Kent

Lonely Hearts is a setting of three poems by the novelist, Christie Dickason, each offering a different view of being alone. The first song, Autumn Migration, describes the flight of a flock of birds across the sky pursued by a ‘single late flyer’ stitching ‘together earth and sky’. The second song, Night Garden, beautiful and atmospheric, evokes the delicate fragrance of a still, summer’s evening in which ‘lives too small to risk the light’ bravely begin to stir. The final, witty song, Would like to meet, presents a ‘Lonely Hearts’ column, with a difference.