Fin’amor (songs from a former criminal)

Instrumentation tenor and hurdy-gurdy (ideally, one performer)

Vocal Range C#3 to C5 (written one octave higher)

Hurdy-Gurdy specifications
MELODY 1 (upper) tuned to G4
MELODY 2 (lower) tuned to G3
DRONE 1 (upper) tuned to C3
DRONE 2 (lower) tuned to C2
DOG (trompette/chien) tuned to G3

Timing ca. 45′

Composed 2025

Poems by James Fagan Tait

Commissioned by Bud Roach, with development support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Hamilton City Enrichment Fund, the Canadian Music Centre BC Region, Pacific Opera Victoria, and the ArQuives

World Premiere TBA

Programme Notes

I Come Here
Born in ’55
The Black-rumped Flameback
The Ballad of Everett Klippert
That Way
John
You Called Again
I Carried the Child
You a Queer?
The Measure of My Breath
The World Changed
Your Mouth
Old Gay Man

Hundreds of years ago in medieval France, troubadours sang songs that told stories of courtly love (fin’amor)—love often unrequited or shared in secret. Centuries later, in the late 1960s, when homosexuality was still discussed as an illness in need of a cure, the Canadian government under Pierre Elliott Trudeau dared to amend the Criminal Code to legalise most (though not all) homosexual acts between consenting adults. As part of the first generation of gay men to grow up in this new era, the three creators of Fin’amor (songs from a former criminal) bring the troubadour tradition into our own time to tell our own stories—stories that, as we see how the progress made in the last decades cannot be taken for granted, need to be told, remembered, and honoured.

PDF perusal score

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