This piece is a deliberately silly fugue for SATB a cappella, written in a mock-Handelian style to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I composed it during the Covid pandemic for Amy Harris, a fellow singer from the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. The plan was to sing it together with 8 or 10 of our closest friends over Zoom, but the latency made live ensemble singing impossible, so we simply listened to the MIDI instead. I have since personalized it for a few other birthdays, and I offer that customization here.

The whole work is tongue-in-cheek, beginning with its tempo marking: Allegro moderato non troppo, quasi allegretto, ma davvero scherzando. In C major with a brisk feel, the fugue subject opens on a grand upward leap of a sixth at “Yea, it’s your birthday,” then tumbles headlong into dotted running eighths on “a joyous event,” the music scrambling to keep up with its own enthusiasm. The basses state the subject first, the tenors take it up, and the two lower voices spin off a few mock-learned episodes. The altos enter several measures later, and at last the sopranos complete the stack.

At the repeat of “joyous event,” a crescendo in the upper voices through a deceptive turn to E major ushers in a delicate middle section in A minor, at “we wish you mirth and cheer.” But soon, the fun resumes: stretti drive “delight and jubilation” (including repeated gratuitous high A’s in the soprano line) back to full voice, with gloriously overlong Handelian melismas on “delight” over a bass pedal point. A broad meno mosso coda in mock-Baroque harmony brings the piece to a happy chordal close with a wide-open C-major chord.

The “text,” such as it is, is my own:

On request and for an additional fee, I can personalize the fugue with the recipient’s name set into the music in the coda section, and into the dedication and title. It makes a unique gift for the singer, a choir director, or music-loving friend in your life.