Music and Texts of GARY BACHLUND
Vocal Music | Piano | Organ | Chamber Music | Orchestral | Articles and Commentary | Poems and Stories | Miscellany | FAQs
I Like Pigs - (2009)
Winston Churchill
for high voice and piano
I like pigs.
Dogs look up to us.
Cats look down to us.
Pigs treat us as equals.
[ 3 pages, circa 1' 10" ]
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, KG, OM, CH, TD, FRS, PC, PC (Can) (1874-1965) was the British politician known chiefly for his leadership of the United Kingdom during World War II, as embodied in the famous picture of "V for victory." He was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955, astatesman and orator, an officer in the British Army, a historian, a Nobel Prize-winning writer, and an artist as well. The electorate in war-weary Britain chose socialist Clement Atlee after Churchill's sterling leadership in that war, much in the same way that Charles Ives reminds us American voters did after World War I, in his text, "Nov. 2, 1920" which he set to music in his 1922 publication, 114 Songs, and which I have also set to music as ...that better things might be. Churchill's reputation as orator was well deserved, and earned by overcoming a childhood speech impediment, and his wit was famous.
Repeated in many collections of witty sayings, this amusing text might remind us of Orwell's choosing pigs as a metaphor for politicians. Certainly others have as well.
The setting in C relies on the same chord form, running in parallel motion up and down the white keys of the piano. Indeed this setting for piano would be impossible in another key. The form is a standard song form, ABA, in which the opening material returns to sum up this humorous sentiment.
The score for I Like Pigs is available as a free PDF download, though any major commercial performance or recording of the work is prohibited without prior arrangement with the composer. Click on the graphic below for this piano-vocal score.
